Introduction to Doubly Linked List

May 13, 2025

What are Doubly Linked Lists?

Detailed Introduction to Doubly Linked List: 

Doubly linked lists extend singly linked lists by adding a second pointer to each node, allowing traversal in both forward and backward directions. This structure enhances flexibility and data integrity, making it easier to insert, delete, or access nodes without disrupting the overall list structure.

Let’s see what these linked lists are:

Linked Lists

Introduction to Doubly Linked List

Doubly linked lists have the following –

  • Data: Like Singly-linked lists, it also contains data that is stored.
  • Pointer (next) – Contains the address of the next node in the doubly linked list
  • Pointer (previous) – Contains the address of the previous node in the doubly linked list

Apart from these basic terminologies are same – Node, Head, Tail

Structure of doubly linked list

Using the following statements in our program we can create a doubly linked list. This set of code will construct a doubly linked list that will store integer type of data.

struct Node 
{
  int Data;
  Struct Node* next;
  Struct Node* prev;
};
Introduction to doubly linked list

Insertion in doubly linked list

Insertion at beginning in doubly linked list

Insertion at end in doubly linked list

Insertion at nth node in doubly linked list

Deletion in doubly linked list

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Advantages

  1. It is better as unlike singly linked list, in a doubly-linked list we can traverse in both directions. Thus, if in case any pointer is lost we can still traverse.
  2. Thus, in Doubly Linked List we can traverse from Head to Tail as well as Tail to Head.
  3. Delete operation is quicker if the pointer to the node to be deleted is given to us already.
  4. Insertion is quicker in doubly-linked lists.

Disadvantages

  1. Extra space is required for the previous pointer for doubly-linked lists(DLL)
  2. All operations require an additional modification of the previous pointer as well along with next pointer.

C++ programming code for creating a doubly linked list

Run 
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
struct Node {
   int data;
   struct Node *prev;
   struct Node *next;
};
struct Node* head = NULL;
void insert(int newdata) {
   struct Node* newnode = (struct Node*) malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
   newnode->data = newdata;
   newnode->prev = NULL;
   newnode->next = head;
   if(head != NULL)
   head->prev = newnode ;
   head = newnode;
}
void display() {
   struct Node* ptr;
   ptr = head;
   while(ptr != NULL) {
      cout<< ptr->data <<" ";
      ptr = ptr->next;
   }
}
int main() {
   insert(3);
   insert(1);
   insert(7);
   insert(2);
   insert(9);
   cout<<"The doubly linked list is: ";
   display();
   return 0;
}
Output:
The doubly linked list is: 9 2 7 1 3