Why does Java have a linked list if I cannot get the next element without converting to an iterator?

Question

Why does Java have a linked list if I cannot get access to the next element without using an iterator?

Answer 1

You don't "convert the list to an Iterator" you "get an iterator over the list". You will find the iterator mechanism much easier to work with in time.

Answer 2

LinkedList is an implementation of the List interface that is also a relative of Collection. A linked list is a concept itself, where every element of the list is contained in a node that knows the next element and the previous one. This is done in order to maintain the insertion order of the elements.

This doesn't happen with another common implementation: ArrayList where each element is allocated in the underlying array and, in this case, order is not guaranteed.

An iterator is one of the multiple ways to iterate through a list that happens to have the great adventage of managing the list while iterating it (for example, the remove method of an iterator doesn't end up in a ConcurrentModificationException) and it's not related to the particular implementation of the traversed collection. It is not the collection, it just "manages" it in a loop-friendly way.