An empty ordered list looks the same as an empty unordered list.
This is how an OrderedLinkedList looks just after construction.
A sensible implementation of any type of data structure must allow the
data structure to hold no data.
Recall the software engineering principle: test early, test often. Here is a program that tests what we have so far:
// OrderedLinkedListTester.java
//
public class OrderedLinkedListTester
{
public static void main( String[] args )
{
// create an empty ordered linked list
OrderedLinkedList list = new OrderedLinkedList();
if ( list.isEmpty() )
System.out.println("List created successfully!");
else
System.out.println("Something is wrong.");
}
}
After an empty list has been created, nodes can be linked into the chain using list.insertInOrder()
(which needs to be written).
(Thought Question: ) Would the methods insertFirst() and insertLast() from the LinkedList class
of the previous chapter be useful?