Is it better to overwrite data or change pointers ?

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While performing sorting algorithm like insertion sort on a single linked list , is it better to perform it using changing of pointers or just overwriting the data ?

What I have tried:

I have made code for both of them .

Posted 17-Feb-18 5:10am

Member 13616463

Updated 17-Feb-18 5:28am

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Solution 3

In addition to Griff's good answer, here is a good article about sorting: Visualization and comparison of sorting algorithms in C#[^]

Posted 17-Feb-18 5:28am

RickZeeland

Solution 2

Quote:
Is it better to overwrite data or change pointers ?

change pointers !
That is the whole reason of existence of linked lists.
Linked list - Wikipedia[^]

Posted 17-Feb-18 5:26am

Patrice T

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OriginalGriff · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-17T05:20:00

Depends.
Generally, swapping pointers will be more efficient, as they are both normally shorter than the data they refer to, and are normally a "machine word" in size, so hardware such as memory systems, caches, etc. are optimised for that size.

But if you are dealing with trivial data lengths, then copying might make sense. Probably not though, as there is the additional overhead of allocating "spare" memory to copy the data to.