Arrays Linked Lists Questions Long
The time complexity of deleting an element from the beginning of a linked list using binary search is O(log n), where n is the number of elements in the linked list.
Binary search is a search algorithm that works efficiently on sorted arrays or lists by repeatedly dividing the search space in half. However, it is not suitable for linked lists because accessing elements in a linked list is not as efficient as accessing elements in an array due to the lack of direct indexing.
In order to delete an element from the beginning of a linked list using binary search, we would first need to find the element to be deleted. Binary search requires accessing the middle element of the list, comparing it with the target element, and then deciding whether to continue the search in the left or right half of the list. This process is repeated until the target element is found or the search space is exhausted.
However, in a linked list, accessing the middle element is not a constant time operation like it is in an array. In a linked list, we would need to traverse the list from the beginning to the middle element, which takes O(n/2) time on average. Therefore, the time complexity of accessing the middle element in a linked list using binary search is O(n/2).
Since we are deleting an element from the beginning of the linked list, we would also need to update the pointers of the previous node to skip the deleted node. This operation takes constant time, O(1).
Considering both the time complexity of accessing the middle element (O(n/2)) and updating the pointers (O(1)), the overall time complexity of deleting an element from the beginning of a linked list using binary search is O(n/2 + 1), which simplifies to O(n).
Therefore, the time complexity of deleting an element from the beginning of a linked list using binary search is O(n).