Doubly linked lists are more efficient than singly linked lists in several scenarios due to their structure and the operations they support. Here's a detailed explanation based on the provided sources:
Bidirectional Traversal: Doubly linked lists allow for efficient bidirectional traversal because each node contains pointers to both the next and the previous nodes. This is particularly useful in applications where traversing the list in both directions is required, such as in navigation systems for front and back navigation, and in browsers for implementing backward and forward navigation of visited web pages[1][2].
Insertion and Deletion Operations: When the location of the element to be inserted or deleted is known, doubly linked lists perform these operations more efficiently than singly linked lists. In singly linked lists, to delete a node or insert a node before a given node, you typically need to traverse the list from the beginning to find the predecessor node. In contrast, doubly linked lists allow for direct access to the predecessor through the previous pointer, making these operations faster as they can be done in constant time ($$O(1)$$) when the node is known[1][2][3].
Use in Specific Data Structures: Doubly linked lists are the preferred underlying data structure for implementing certain types of data structures like queues and deques (double-ended queues). This is because they support efficient insertion at the end and deletion from the beginning in constant time ($$O(1)$$), which is crucial for the performance of these data structures. For queues, while arrays can insert at the end in $$O(1)$$, they require $$O(N)$$ time for deletion from the beginning. Doubly linked lists overcome this limitation[1].
