How to find nth element from the end of a singly linked list?

Question

The following function is trying to find the nth to last element of a singly linked list.

For example:

If the elements are

Answer 1

You can just loop through the linkedlist and get the size. Once you have the size you can find the n'th term in 2n which is O(n) still.

public T nthToLast(int n) {
    // return null if linkedlist is empty
    if (head == null) return null;

    // declare placeholder where size of linkedlist will be stored
    // we are hoping that size of linkedlist is less than MAX of INT
    int size = 0;

    // This is O(n) for sure
    Node i = head;
    while (i.next != null) {
        size += 1;
        i = i.next;
    }

    // if user chose something outside the size of the linkedlist return null
    if (size < n)
        return null;

    // This is O(n) if n == size
    i = head;
    while(size > n) {
        size--;
        i = i.next;
    }

    // Time complexity = n + n = 2n
    // therefore O(n)

    return i.value;
}