pointer structures contrary to arrayspointer structures are lists of items that can be spread out in memory this is because each item contains one or more links to other items in the structure what type of links these are dependent on the type of structure we have if we are dealing with linked liststhen we will have links to the next (and possibly previousitems in the structure in the case of treewe have parent-child links as well as sibling links in tilebased game where the game map is built up of hexeseach node will have links to up to six adjacent map cells there are several benefits with pointer structures first of allthey don' require sequential storage space secondthey can start small and grow arbitrarily as you add more nodes to the structure as noted in python data types and structureshoweverthis comes at cost if you have list of integerseach node is going to take up the space of an integeras well as an additional integer for storing the pointer to the next node nodes at the heart of lists (and several other data structuresis the concept of node before we go any furtherlet us consider this idea for while to begin withwe shall create few stringsa "eggsb "hamc "spamnow you have three variableseach with unique namea typeand value what we do not have is way of saying in which way the variables relate to each other nodes allow us to do this node is container of datatogether with one or more links to other nodes link is pointer simple type of node is one that only has link to the next node