Deleting a middle node from a single linked list when pointer to the previous node is not available

Question

Is it possible to delete a middle node in the single linked list when the only information available we have is the pointer to the node to be deleted and not the pointer to

Answer 1

You'll have to march down the list to find the previous node. That will make deleting in general O(n**2). If you are the only code doing deletes, you may do better in practice by caching the previous node, and starting your search there, but whether this helps depends on the pattern of deletes.