Visual Basic 2005 for Programmers: Deitel Developer Series, Second Edition

24.4. Linked Lists

A linked list is a linear collection (i.e., a sequence) of self-referential class objects called nodes, connected by reference links—thus the term “linked” list. A program accesses a linked list via a reference to the first node of the list. Each subsequent node is accessed via the link-reference member stored in the previous node. By convention, the link reference in the last node of a list is set to Nothing to mark the end of the list. Data is stored in a linked list dynamically—that is, each node is created as necessary. You can declare a node’s class to store data of any type, including references to objects of other classes. Stacks and queues are also linear data structures—in fact, they are constrained versions of linked ...