What is the time complexity of inserting an element at the end of a linked list?
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the time complexity of inserting an element at the end of a linked list?
O(1)
O(n)
O(log n)
O(n^2)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the time complexity of inserting an element at the end of a linked list?
Step 1: Understand what a linked list is. A linked list is a data structure where each element (node) points to the next one.
Step 2: Know that inserting an element at the end means we need to add a new node after the last node.
Step 3: To find the last node, we start at the first node and follow the links until we reach a node that points to null (indicating it's the last node).
Step 4: Counting the number of nodes we visit while traversing to the last node takes time. If there are 'n' nodes, we visit 'n' nodes.
Step 5: Therefore, the time it takes to insert an element at the end of a linked list is proportional to the number of nodes, which is O(n).
