Advantages of Circular Linked Lists
- Any node can be a starting point. We can traverse the whole list by starting from any point. We just need to stop when the first visited node is visited again.
- Useful for implementation of a queue. Unlike this implementation, we don’t need to maintain two pointers for front and rear if we use a circular linked list. We can maintain a pointer to the last inserted node and the front can always be obtained as next of last.
- Circular lists are useful in applications to repeatedly go around the list. For example, when multiple applications are running on a PC, it is common for the operating system to put the running applications on a list and then cycle through them, giving each of them a slice of time to execute, and then making them wait while the CPU is given to another application. It is convenient for the operating system to use a circular list so that when it reaches the end of the list it can cycle around to the front of the list.
- Circular Doubly Linked Lists are used for the implementation of advanced data structures like the Fibonacci Heap.
- Implementing a circular linked list can be relatively easy compared to other more complex data structures like trees or graphs.
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