Creating a LinkedList class from scratch

Question

We were given an assignment to create a LinkedList from scratch, and there are absolutely no readings given to guide us on this migrane-causing task. Also everything online

Answer 1

Sure, a Linked List is a bit confusing for programming n00bs, pretty much the temptation is to look at it as Russian Dolls, because that's what it seems like, a LinkedList Object in a LinkedList Object. But that's a touch difficult to visualize, instead look at it like a computer.

LinkedList = Data + Next Member

Where it's the last member of the list if next is NULL

So a 5 member LinkedList would be:

LinkedList(Data1, LinkedList(Data2, LinkedList(Data3, LinkedList(Data4, LinkedList(Data5, NULL)))))

But you can think of it as simply:

Data1 -> Data2 -> Data3 -> Data4 -> Data5 -> NULL

So, how do we find the end of this? Well, we know that the NULL is the end so:

public void append(LinkedList myNextNode) {
  LinkedList current = this; //Make a variable to store a pointer to this LinkedList
  while (current.next != NULL) { //While we're not at the last node of the LinkedList
    current = current.next; //Go further down the rabbit hole.
  }
  current.next = myNextNode; //Now we're at the end, so simply replace the NULL with another Linked List!
  return; //and we're done!
}

This is very simple code of course, and it will infinitely loop if you feed it a circularly linked list! But that's the basics.