Why exactly do we need a “Circular Linked List” (s

Question

Why exactly do we need a "Circular Linked List" (singly or doubly) data structure?

What problem does it solve that is evident with simple Linked Lists (singly or doubly)?

Answer 1

A good example of an application where circular linked list should be used is a timesharing problem solved by the operating system.

Answer 2

A circular linked list can be effectively used to create a queue (FIFO) or a deque (efficient insert and remove from front and back). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list#Circularly-linked_vs._linearly-linked

Answer 3

Circular linked lists are widely used in applications where tasks are to be repeated or in time sharing applications. Circular queue can keep a track of tasks which have been performed and which has to be performed,once the specific task is done it jumps to next one and when whole set of task is conpleted it again jumps to first task to complete the remaining job. In practical use : when you open multiple applications on your system the memory of those applications are saved in a circular fashion, you can observe this if u continuously press win+tab/alt+tab for switching applications. Also in multiplayer board games ,each player are assigned to node in the linked list and the rotation is performed

Answer 4

A circular list is simpler than a normal doubly-linked list. Append is just prepend and shift forward once, Pop back is just shift back once and pop front. By tying the two ends together, you get a double-ended list for the cost of just implementing the operations of a one-ended list.

Answer 5

We can use circularly linked list in resource pooling. If many users want to use a shared resource, we can allocate that resource using circularly linked list.

Answer 6

Applications

1) We can use circular linked list any application where the entries appear in a rotating manner.
2) Circular linked list is the basic idea of round robin scheduling algorithm.