Re: How to implement Linked List

[rinceWind]

in reply to How to implement Linked List

Perl has built in fully dynamic data structures - arrays and hashes. These are in most cases sufficient for resident data needs. Can you explain why you need a linked list - is this a practical application or an academic exercise?

Here's something cobbled together - a class that will give you linked list:

package Data::LinkedList;

sub new {
    my $pkg = shift;
    my %proto = @_;

    bless \%proto, $pkg;
}

sub data {
    my $self = shift;

    @_ ? ($self->{data} = shift) : $self->{data};
}

sub next {
    my $self = shift;

    @_ ? ($self->{next} = shift) : $self->{next};
}

1;

__END__

my $ele1 = Data::LinkedList->new( data => 'abel' );
my $ele2 = Data::LinkedList->new( data => 'baker', next => $ele1);

[msk_0984]

Hi

    Felt good to see your prompt reply. Actually i was exploring Perl and thought of implementing the Linked list concept which might be Useful in for me in Future purposes........ So thought of trying it out

[Melly]

As others have said, linked lists are never really necessary in Perl.

See How do I handle linked lists? for an explanation (as well as a way to implement them).

[tilly]

And making it a doubly linked list is only slightly harder. However making a doubly linked list which does not leak memory is far, far harder.

Here is an example off of my scratchpad that does this. After examining it (and trying it if you want to see abysmal performance) I think that the point will be adequately made that linked lists are possible in Perl, but you really want to use arrays instead.

Read more... (3 kB)