Chapter 14
Node-Based Data Structures

For the next several chapters, we’re going to explore a variety of data structures that all build upon a single concept—the node. As you’ll see shortly, nodes are pieces of data that may be dispersed throughout the computer’s memory. Node-based data structures offer new ways to organize and access data that provide a number of major performance advantages.

In this chapter, we’ll explore the linked list, which is the simplest node-based data structure and the foundation for future chapters. You’ll discover that linked lists seem almost identical to arrays but come with their own set of trade-offs in efficiency that can give us a performance boost for certain situations.