Singly Linked List Deletion (Implementation)

Introduction

The deletion operation combines principles from both insertion and search. It uses the search functionality to find the value in the list.

Deletion is one of the instances where linked lists are more efficient than arrays. In an array, you have to shift all the elements backward if one element is deleted. Even then, the end of the array is empty, and it takes up unnecessary memory.

In the case of linked lists, the node is removed at head merely in constant time.

Let’s take a look at the different types of deletion operations we can perform in singly-linked lists.

Types of Deletion

There are two basic delete operations for linked lists:

1. Deletion at head
2. Deletion by value

In this lesson, we will look at the implementation of the deletion at the head algorithm.

Deletion at Head

This operation simply deletes a node from the head of the list, which means that it always deletes the first element of the list. This type of deletion is used when your list is ordered, and you want to implement a priority queue–via a linked list-- to keep track of all the elements. Here’s an illustration of how this type of deletion works in a Singly Linked List: