Singly Linked List in Data Structures: Definition and Operations

Singly Linked List: C Programming Data Structure

1. In this type of Linked List, two successive nodes are linked together in linear fashion.
2. Each Node contains the address of the next node to be followed.
3. In Singly Linked List only Linear or Forward Sequential movement is possible.
4. Elements are accessed sequentially , no direct access is allowed.

Explanation :

1. It is the most basic type of Linked List in C.
2. It is a simple sequence of Dynamically allocated Nodes.
3. Each Node has its successor and predecessor.
4. First Node does not have predecessor while the last node does not have any successor.
5. Last Node has successor reference as "NULL".
6. In the above Linked List We have 3 types of nodes.

1.First Node
2.Last Node
3.Intermediate Nodes

1. In Singly Linked List access is given only in one direction thus Accessing Singly Linked is Unidirectional.
2. We can have multiple data fields inside Node but we have only single Link for next node.

Node Structure for Singly Linked List :

struct node {
      int data;
      struct node *next;
}start = NULL;

In the above node structure we have defined two fields in structure –

Explanation of Node Structure :

1. We have declared structure of type NODE, i.e we have created a Single Linked List Node.
2. A Node in general language is a Structure having two value containers i.e [Square box having two Partitions]
3. One value container stores actual data and another stores address of the another structure i.e (Square box having two partitions)
4. We have declared a structure and also created 1 very first structure called "Start".
5. Very first node "Start" contain 1 field for storing data and another field for address of another structure
6. As this is very first node or Structure, we have specified its next field with “NULL” value.