Question

Given a singly linked list implementation of a list, what is the worst-case time complexity for the following operations (assume that the implementation only maintains a reference to the head of the linked list):

Retrieving the last item in the list.

Answer 1

The worst-case time complexity for retrieving the last item in a singly linked list is O(n), where n is the number of elements in the list.

Step-by-step explanation:

The worst-case time complexity for retrieving the last item in a singly linked list is O(n), where n is the number of elements in the list.

This is because in a singly linked list, each element only maintains a reference to the next element in the list, not the previous element. Therefore, to retrieve the last item, we need to traverse through the entire list starting from the head until we reach the last element.

For example, if the linked list has 10 elements, we would need to traverse through all 10 elements to reach the last one, resulting in a time complexity of O(n).