A singly linked list is a special type of linked list in which each node has only one link that points to the next node in the linked list.
Characteristics of a Singly Linked List:
- Each node holds a single value and a reference to the next node in the list.
- The list has a head, which is a reference to the first node in the list. We can access all items of a list using the head node. Sometimes we also separately maintain tail of linked list to quickly access the last node. For example, in queue implementation of the linked list, we prefer to quickly insert at the end.
- The nodes are not stored in a contiguous block of memory, but instead, each node holds the address of the next node in the list.
- Accessing elements in a singly linked list requires traversing the list from the head to the desired node, as there is no direct access to a specific node in memory.
Please refer Applications, Advantages and Disadvantages of Linked List for detailed applications of linked list data structure