Concept Challenge: Drawing Linked Lists, second attempt

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Data Structures and Performance

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University of California San Diego

Data Structures and Performance

1481 ratings

Course 4 of 4 in the Specialization Object Oriented Programming in Java

How do Java programs deal with vast quantities of data? Many of the data structures and algorithms that work with introductory toy examples break when applications process real, large data sets. Efficiency is critical, but how do we achieve it, and how do we even measure it? This is an intermediate Java course. We recommend this course to learners who have previous experience in software development or a background in computer science, and in particular, we recommend that you have taken the first course in this specialization (which also requires some previous experience with Java). In this course, you will use and analyze data structures that are used in industry-level applications, such as linked lists, trees, and hashtables. You will explain how these data structures make programs more efficient and flexible. You will apply asymptotic Big-O analysis to describe the performance of algorithms and evaluate which strategy to use for efficient data retrieval, addition of new data, deletion of elements, and/or memory usage. The program you will build throughout this course allows its user to manage, manipulate and reason about large sets of textual data. This is an intermediate Java course, and we will build on your prior knowledge. This course is designed around the same video series as in our first course in this specialization, including explanations of core content, learner videos, student and engineer testimonials, and support videos -- to better allow you to choose your own path through the course!

From the lesson

Interfaces, Linked Lists vs. Arrays, and Correctness

This week we'll start talking about some of the basic concepts that one expects to find in a data structures course: the idea of data abstraction, and a data structure called a Linked List. Even though Linked Lists are not very efficient structures (for the most part), they do hit home the idea of "linking" pieces of data together in your computer's memory, rather than storing the data in one contiguous region. This linking idea will be central to many of the more advanced data structures, namely trees and graphs, that are coming up later in this course and in the next course in this specialization. In this module you'll also learn tools and procedures for unit testing your code, which is a way to make sure that what you've written is correct, and a staple practice of any sophisticated software developer.

Core: Introduction to Abstraction6:05

In the Real World: Data Abstraction5:15

Core: Linked Lists vs. Arrays11:40

In the Real World: Lists vs. Arrays1:49

Core: Generics and Exceptions7:55

Core: Java Code for a Linked List6:13

Concept Challenge: Implementing linked lists, a first attempt10:00

Concept Challenge: Drawing Linked Lists, second attempt6:48

Support: Adding to a Linked List6:22

When I struggled: Data structures1:36

Meet the Instructors

Christine Alvarado
Associate Teaching Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Mia Minnes
Assistant Teaching Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Leo Porter
Assistant Teaching Professor
Computer Science and Engineering

[NOISE] So, now we're ready for a second concept challenge.

And in the previous one, remember how we talked about how tricky it was to get

the arrows right, to get the references right.

And so we're really gonna hammer home that point, with a second concept challenge.

And so, as usual, you're going to pause and try to solve the problem yourself.

Then discuss you solution, watch the UC San Diego learners, discuss it as well,

then answer the question again and

confirm your understanding when we come back together.

So, we're looking at really similar code to what we talked about in the previous

concept challenge but we're just swapping two lines, okay?

The two lines that gave us the most trouble before.

And so let's just see what happens if we switch the order.

And what I'd like you to think about is what does the list of notes that

we create in that main method look like if we've done this like little swap,

this just tiny, tiny little swap, and then run the code.

>> Hi, I'm Paul.

>> I'm Nancy.

>> I'm Millie.

Okay, so if we look at the last two lines of the code,

we noticed that the order of them has switched,

and then I think by noticing that point we can firstly eliminate answer A.

Because if we look at the last line of function,

we noticed that it connects node n0 with n2,

which makes the next pointer of n0 should be pointing to n2 instead of n1.

And we noticed that answer A is the only one that connects node n0 with n1,

which cannot be correct.

So, we can just eliminate this one.

And what else can we do?

>> Well, I think we can also, like in the previous question,

we can also eliminate the null pointer exception.

Since if you look at the constructors we do notice that after you add

more nodes you're actually pointing to something, so

it's not actually referencing a null data.

On the very last line of the of the last constructor,

I was kinda confused because it seemed that the node was pointing to itself.

And I'm not actually sure if it's allowed to do that.

But, that's what it seemed like it was doing so

I think answer D would be the best answer, if it's actually possible.

>> I agree.

I think that's, it looks like that's what's happening in the last two lines of

code, since the previous node's next gets set to this.

>> All right, let's do a step-by-step walk-through to really

get at what causes the problem when we switch those two lines of code.

And let's think together about how the list of nodes will be generated and

what it will look like at the end.

Now, the very first line of code, because we used the no argument constructor

is exactly the same as in the previous concept challenge, so

we're not going to go through the details, but let's think about what happens when we

use the constructor with two parameters to create a new object,

a new SSL, sorry, SLL node object, this time pointed to by n1.

So when we call that two argument constructor,

we now have prevNode pointing to the object that is

pointed to by n0 that we created before, and this points to the object

that's being constructed at the moment by this constructor.

And so the first thing we do is we fill in the data value with the number 1,

the integer 1, and now we go ahead and think about the references and

the points, the arrows.

So, at this line of code,

what we'd like to do is assign the value this to prevNode.next.

So we follow the arrows.

We look at prevNode.next and its current value is null.

But what we'd like to do is set its new value to be this,

namely to point to the object that we're building.

And now we're ready to go ahead and assign prevNode.next's value to

also be the value of this.next.

So that means that when we look at this .next,

it should get a new value, whatever value prevNode.next had.

And so that means copying that arrow into

also being the arrow that's within this .next.

And so notice that both prevNode.next and

this .next are now going to point to the object that's being constructed.

Okay.

That's a little bit different from before and it might not be what we want.

So let's just keep with it a little bit more and

see what happens with the next node as well.

We now call the two argument constructor and build a new object of type SLLNode.

We fill in the data, so we've got the integer 2 now and

now we're ready to play with the reference next so the variable next and

what we'd like to do is set prevNode.next to this.

Now prevNode, just as before, is the object pointed to by n0, and

we'd like to update it's value to point to the current object that we're building.

And so that means that instead of the arrow that we had to the object pointed to

by n1, we now point to the object that's being created to

that's also being pointed to by n2.

And now we'd like to update the current object's next value to prevNode.next.

But that means, well, we'd need to copy the value that we just did because we just

updated prevNode.next and so

we'd look at that arrow that points to the current object.

And we copy it into this .next as well.

So, the picture of the three nodes that we've created,

well it starts the same as before, we still have a head of the list,

we've got a sentinel node, a node that has its data being null.

But now, what it points to or

what it links to is the object that's pointed to by n2.

But notice what happened to the object that's pointed to by n1,

it's all lonely over there, it's not linked to the other two nodes at all.

And so what we have are three nodes that don't really form a linked list anymore,

and so by swapping just those two lines of code, we've broken our implementation and

we no longer get a linked list.

So the point of this little exercise was just to caution you about

the care that you need to take when you're implementing linked list data structures.

And especially when you're thinking about dealing with those references and

being really careful about the order in which we copy the references around.

And not losing any of the information and any of the links that we've already built.

So now you're ready to implement your own doubly linked list

when you go ahead into the project.

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