Run results for: Array vs Linked List

Run details:

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/94.0.4606.81 Safari/537.36

Browser: Chrome 94

Operating system: Linux

Device Platform: Desktop

Date tested: 3 years ago

Test name	Executions per second
Linked List	2240.7 Ops/sec
Array	570.8 Ops/sec

Script Preparation code:

/**
 * Linked List base code courtesy Nicholas C Zakas. Additional methods are my own.
 */
function LinkedList() {
  /**
   * Pointer to first item in the list.
   * @property _head
   * @type Object
   * @private
   */
  this._head = null;
}

function createNode(data, next) {
  return {
    data: data,
    next
  };
}

LinkedList.prototype = {
  //restore constructor
  constructor: LinkedList,

  /**
   * Appends some data to the end of the list. This method traverses
   * the existing list and places the value at the end in a new item.
   * @param {variant} data The data to add to the list.
   * @return {Void}
   * @method add
   */
  push: function(data) {
    //create a new item object, place data in
    var node = createNode(data);

    //used to traverse the structure
    var current;

    //special case: no items in the list yet
    if (this._head === null) {
      this._head = node;
    } else {
      current = this._head;

      while (current.next) {
        current = current.next;
      }

      current.next = node;
    }
  },

  /**
   * Like its array counterpart, unshift appends an item to the beginning of the list
   */
  unshift: function(data) {
    var node = createNode(data);

    //special case: no items in the list yet
    if (this._head === null) {
      this._head = node;
    } else {
      node.next = this._head;
      this._head = node;
    }
  },

  /**
   * Like its array counterpart, shift removes and returns the first item of the list
   */
  shift: function() {
    const node = this._head;
    this._head = this._head.next;
    return node;
  },

  /**
   * Retrieves the data in the given position in the list.
   * @param {int} index The zero-based index of the item whose value
   *      should be returned.
   * @return {variant} The value in the "data" portion of the given item
   *      or null if the item doesn't exist.
   * @method item
   */
  item: function(index) {
    //check for out-of-bounds values
    if (index > -1) {
      var current = this._head,
        i = 0;

      while (i++ < index && current) {
        current = current.next;
      }

      return current ? current.data : null;
    } else {
      return null;
    }
  },

  /**
   * Removes the item from the given location in the list.
   * @param {int} index The zero-based index of the item to remove.
   * @return {variant} The data in the given position in the list or null if
   *      the item doesn't exist.
   * @method remove
   */
  remove: function(index) {
    //check for out-of-bounds values
    if (index > -1) {
      var current = this._head,
        previous,
        i = 0;

      //special case: removing first item
      if (index === 0) {
        this._head = current.next;
      } else {
        //find the right location
        while (i++ < index) {
          previous = current;
          current = current.next;
        }

        //skip over the item to remove
        previous.next = current.next;
      }

      //return the value
      return current ? current.data : null;
    } else {
      return null;
    }
  }
};

Tests:

Linked List
var list = new LinkedList(); var x = 10000; while(x--) { list.unshift(x); }
Array
var array = []; var x = 10000; while(x--) { array.unshift(x); }

Run results for: Array vs Linked List

Manage Todos in a list - compare performance of Array vs Linked List.

Linked List

Array