I have to implement a queue by using circular linked lists with only one iterator. My doubt is which is the better way in terms of performance, maintaining an iterator to the first item or from the last item?
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I have to implement a queue by using circular linked lists with only one iterator. My doubt is which is the better way in terms of performance, maintaining an iterator to the first item or from the last item?
Well, if you have a pointer to the first item, then operations on the end of the list are going to be O(N). With a pointer to the end of the list, you can do operations on both the beginning and the end in O(1). Generally, if you have a circularly linked list, then you want to be able to reach the beginning and the end, so the answer is that you performance will be better with a pointer to the end.