What is the time complexity of traversing a linked list with 'n' nodes?
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the time complexity of traversing a linked list with 'n' nodes?
O(1)
O(n)
O(log n)
O(n^2)
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the time complexity of traversing a linked list with 'n' nodes?
Step 1: Understand what a linked list is. A linked list is a data structure made up of nodes, where each node contains data and a reference (or link) to the next node.
Step 2: Know that traversing a linked list means visiting each node one by one to access or process the data in them.
Step 3: Realize that to visit each of the 'n' nodes in the linked list, you need to start from the first node and move to the next node until you reach the end.
Step 4: Since you visit each node exactly once, the total number of operations you perform is equal to the number of nodes, which is 'n'.
Step 5: In terms of time complexity, we express this as O(n), meaning the time it takes grows linearly with the number of nodes.
