What is the time complexity of deleting an element from a linked list given a po
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the time complexity of deleting an element from a linked list given a pointer to that node?
O(1)
O(n)
O(log n)
O(n log n)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the time complexity of deleting an element from a linked list given a pointer to that node?
Step 1: Understand that a linked list is made up of nodes, where each node contains data and a pointer to the next node.
Step 2: When you have a pointer to the node you want to delete, you can access that node directly.
Step 3: To delete the node, you need to change the pointer of the previous node to skip the node being deleted and point to the next node instead.
Step 4: This operation of changing the pointer does not depend on the size of the linked list; it takes the same amount of time regardless of how many nodes are in the list.
Step 5: Therefore, the time complexity for deleting a node when you have a pointer to it is O(1), which means it takes constant time.
