Applications, Advantages and Disadvantages of Circular Doubly linked List

What is Circular Doubly Linked List?

Circular Doubly Linked List is made up of two list the First one is doubly linked list and second one is circular Linked List. Its last node points to the first node. Circular doubly linked list is bi directional in nature. It means that the it can be transverse in both directions.

Applications of Circular Doubly Linked List

Circular Doubly Linked is used to create many applications has many applications. Following are some applications:

Browser History: Circular Doubly Linked list is used in storage of browser history. It allows user to move to the previously visited page and also to the next page easily.
Image Slideshows: Circular Doubly Linked Lists is used to create image slideshows or presentations. Each node represents an image and the circular structure enables looping from the last image back to the first.
Music Player Playlist: It is use to play songs in music player applications. It helps in playing the next song automatically when one song stops playing. It helps in playing the first song again if the last song of the player list has been reached.
GPS Navigation: It is helpful in GPS Navigation where it allows user to reach to his/her destination quickly and easily. The Circular structure allows backtracking thus it allows user to move back to the previous place or to take a different route.
Calculator History: The List is used to store calculator history and allows user to perform mathematical calculations. Here each node contains information about the mathematical expression done by the user. The Circular structure allows user to get previous calculations or to delete unwanted entry.
Carousel or Rotating Displays: Circular Doubly Linked Lists are often used in carousel displays found in amusement parks, museums, or shopping centres.
Train or Bus Routes: Circular Doubly Linked Lists can be used to represent train or bus routes in transportation systems. Each node represents a station or a stop along the route, and the circular structure enables continuous looping of the route.
Animation Keyframes: Circular Doubly Linked Lists can be used in animation software to manage keyframes. Each node represents a keyframe sand the circular structure enables seamless playback and looping of the animation.
CPU Scheduling: Circular Doubly Linked List can be used to perform CPU scheduling which allows processor to determine which process should be executed further. The linked list is used to manage the execution of processes on the CPU which allows the operating system to efficiently allocate CPU time to different processes.
Image Processing: Circular Doubly Linked list can be used in image processing to represent the pixels in an image. In this image processing algorithm, each node in the list contains information such as the colour or grayscale value of the pixel. The circular structure of the list allows efficient traversal of the pixels in many different operations such as rotating the image in the different direction or blurring the image. The circular structure of the list efficiently processes the images that are stored in a circular or toroidal shape such as images of planets or other spherical objects.

Advantages of Circular Doubly Linked List

Following are the list of advantages of Circular Doubly Linked List:

Flexible: Circular Doubly Linked list is flexible as node can be inserted or deleted at any position in the list.
Simpler Implementation of Data structure: Data structures such as stacks, queues, and hash tables can be easily implemented with the help of Circular Doubly Linked List. The circular structure of the list makes the implementation simple and it also reduces the amount of code required.
Efficient use of Cache Memory: Circular Doubly Linked Lists keeps the most recently accessed data at the starting of the list and it removes the least recently accessed data from the end of the list.
Avoids Null pointer Exception: In the Single Linked List the last node in the list points to null, In Doubly Linked List the last node points to the first node in the list and as it is circular in structure there is no chance of arising null pointer exception. It can access nodes in both directions.
Implementation of Circular Operation: As it is circular in structure it can easily implement operation such as rotating list, shifting a node which is very useful in music player and image processing.
Handling Large numbers of node: Circular Doubly Linked List can easily handle large number of nodes. It can also easily add or delete any node in between as per the requirement of the user without affecting the performance of the nodes.
Space efficient: In Circular Doubly Linked List it does not allocate extra memory to the pointer. Thus it can save a lot of time and space.
Easy Reversal of the list: In Circular Doubly linked list the nodes are connected in both forward and backward directions. It is useful in music player application where user can move the song both in forward and in backward direction.

Disadvantages of Circular Doubly Linked List

Following are some Disadvantages of Circular Doubly Linked List:

Risk of memory leaks: The circular nature of a Circular Doubly Linked are more prone to memory leaks than other data structures.
Increased use of pointer: In circular Doubly Linked list two pointers are required to store the address of the previous and next nodes. So, this increases the memory usage and make the data structure less efficient than another algorithm.
Difficult to reverse: It is more difficult to reverse the order of elements in circular doubly linked list than the singly linked list.
Use in limited applications: Circular Doubly Linked List are useful for some applications but it may not be useful for other applications. Array or hash table may be a better choice than circular doubly linked list in some applications. Circular Doubly Linked Lists may not be suitable for certain algorithms or applications where a linear list is required.
Inconsistent: In a Circular Doubly Linked nodes are added or removed in between the list . This may affect the pointers of other nodes which may lead to inconsistency in the list.
Difficulty in debugging: Debugging in Circular Doubly Linked Lists can be more challenging than singly linked lists because it creates infinite loops due to the circular structure of the list.
Hard to remove node: If you want to remove the nodes in circular doubly linked list then you must update the pointer of both the previous and the next node.
More Complex: Circular Doubly Linked Lists have more complex logic and it requires more code to implement as compared to other simpler data structures like arrays or singly linked lists.