lax msp atl head bos tail figure example of singly linked list whose elements are strings indicating airport codes the list instance maintains member named head that identifies the first node of the listand in some applications another member named tail that identifies the last node of the list the none object is denoted as the first and last node of linked list are known as the head and tail of the listrespectively by starting at the headand moving from one node to another by following each node' next referencewe can reach the tail of the list we can identify the tail as the node having none as its next reference this process is commonly known as traversing the linked list because the next reference of node can be viewed as link or pointer to another nodethe process of traversing list is also known as link hopping or pointer hopping linked list' representation in memory relies on the collaboration of many objects each node is represented as unique objectwith that instance storing reference to its element and reference to the next node (or noneanother object represents the linked list as whole minimallythe linked list instance must keep reference to the head of the list without an explicit reference to the headthere would be no way to locate that node (or indirectlyany othersthere is not an absolute need to store direct reference to the tail of the listas it could otherwise be located by starting at the head and traversing the rest of the list howeverstoring an explicit reference to the tail node is common convenience to avoid such traversal in similar regardit is common for the linked list instance to keep count of the total number of nodes that comprise the list (commonly described as the size of the list)to avoid the need to traverse the list to count the nodes for the remainder of this we continue to illustrate nodes as objectsand each node' "nextreference as pointer howeverfor the sake of simplicitywe illustrate node' element embedded directly within the node structureeven though the element isin factan independent object for examplefigure is more compact illustration of the linked list from figure lax head msp atl bos tail figure compact illustration of singly linked listwith elements embedded in the nodes (rather than more accurately drawn as references to external objects