Applications
As the name implies, lists can be used to store a list of records. The items in a list can be sorted for the purpose of fast search (binary search).
Because in computing, lists are easier to realize than sets, a finite set in mathematical sense can be realized as a list with additional restrictions, that is, duplicate elements are disallowed and such that order is irrelevant. If the list is sorted, it speeds up determining if a given item is already in the set but in order to ensure the order, it requires more time to add new entry to the list. In efficient implementations, however, sets are implemented using self-balancing binary search trees or hash tables, rather than a list.
Read more about this topic: List (abstract Data Type)