{"id":3903,"date":"2021-08-17T12:11:57","date_gmt":"2021-08-17T12:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prepbytes.com\/blog\/?p=3903"},"modified":"2023-07-31T05:02:37","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T05:02:37","slug":"java-program-to-search-an-element-in-a-linked-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prepbytes.com\/blog\/java-program-to-search-an-element-in-a-linked-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Java Program to search an element in a Linked List"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Throughout our exploration of linked list operations, including insertion and deletion, one crucial operation that stands out is searching within a linked list. Regardless of the various operations we encounter, the need for efficient searching in a linked list remains essential.<\/p>\n

Java program to search element in linked list<\/h2>\n

In this question, we are given a singly linked list. We have to search for a given element X in the list. If it is present, we have to return its index, otherwise -1.<\/p>\n

How to find element in linked list in java<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s first understand the problem statement with the help of examples.<\/p>\n

Suppose the given list is:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and the element to be searched is 15. As we can see, 15 is present in the list at the 2nd<\/sup> index. <\/p>\n

So, our program will return the value 2 (considering 0 based indexing), which is the index of elements to be searched in the given linked list.<\/p>\n

Input:<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

X = 15.<\/p>\n

Output:<\/strong> 2<\/p>\n

Explanation:<\/strong> As we can see, 15 is present at the 2nd<\/sup> index.<\/p>\n

Now, I think it is clear from the above example what we have to do in the problem. So let\u2019s move to approach.<\/p>\n

Before jumping to approach, just try to think how you can approach this problem?<\/p>\n

It’s okay, if your solution is not the best optimized solution, we will try to optimize it together.<\/p>\n

This question is not a very complex one. We have to make use of list traversal in the question. We can either use the in-built library to traverse through the linked list or the normal linked list traversal method. <\/p>\n

Let us have a glance at the approaches.<\/p>\n

Let us have a glance at the approaches for the Java program to find element in linked list.<\/p>\n

Approach and Algorithm(In-built libraries) for searching in linked list<\/h3>\n

The approach is going to be pretty simple. <\/p>\n

    \n
  • First, we will initialize the linked list. <\/li>\n
  • Now, as we are allowed to use in-built libraries, we can use a for loop with zero-based indexing to traverse through the list. <\/li>\n
  • To extract the ith<\/sup> element, we can simply use List.get(i)<\/strong>.<\/li>\n
  • We will create an integer variable ans<\/strong> and initialize it with -1. <\/li>\n
  • Now, we will simply traverse through the loop and for every element, we will check if the data of that node is equal to the searched element. If the condition becomes true, we will store i<\/strong> in ans<\/strong> and break from the loop.<\/li>\n
  • In the end, if the value of ans<\/strong> remains -1, it means that the element is not present in the list. Else, we will print the ans.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Code Implementation of search in linked list java<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t