Doubly Linked List - Nomenclature and Implementation

Nomenclature and Implementation

The first and last nodes of a doubly linked list are immediately accessible (i.e., accessible without traversal, and usually called head and tail) and therefore allow traversal of the list from the beginning or end of the list, respectively: e.g., traversing the list from beginning to end, or from end to beginning, in a search of the list for a node with specific data value. Any node of a doubly linked list, once gotten, can be used to begin a new traversal of the list, in either direction (towards beginning or end), from the given node.

The link fields of a doubly linked list node are often called next and previous or forward and backward. The references stored in the link fields are usually implemented as pointers, but (as in any linked data structure) they may also be address offsets or indices into an array where the nodes live.