LinkedList vs. Arrays

So, what exactly is the difference between LinkedList and Arrays?

The purpose of both of these data structures is to hold a list of items

Properties of a LinkedList

• No fixed size, No indexes to access elements
• Every element has a reference (pointer) to the next element
• Must go through the whole LinkedList to add a new item

4 item LinkedList

Properties of an Array

• Fixed size and we have indexes
• Indexes help us pick and choose values from a given position
• Updating an element is easy → x[2] = 10

4 item Array

As we can see, an Array element has no reference to any of it’s neighboring elements. Because we can simply access any element using indexes.

However, with a LinkedList we only have a pointer to another element. And, lot of the operations require us to traverse the list in order to get that task done.