EE200 Homework Assignment: Templated LinkedList Class

Project Overview

This project implements a templated LinkedList class in C++ as part of an assignment focusing on memory management, deep copying, and linked data structures. The class supports dynamic operations such as insertion, deletion, and retrieval, offering a robust and flexible implementation for managing lists of any data type. Emphasis was placed on clean memory management and adherence to C++ best practices.

Features

• Constructors:
  • Default constructor to initialize an empty list.
  • Constructor to initialize the list from an array with deep copying.
  • Copy constructor for creating deep copies of LinkedList instances.
• Destructor: Safely cleans up all dynamically allocated memory to prevent leaks.
• Dynamic Operations:
  • size(): Returns the number of elements in the list.
  • getItem(int n): Retrieves the element at the specified index.
  • insert(T x, int pos): Inserts a new element at the specified position.
  • remove(int pos): Removes the element at the specified position.
• Operator Overloading:
  • Deep copy assignment operator to ensure safe copying between LinkedList instances.
• Memory Management:
  • Designed to be Valgrind-clean, ensuring no memory leaks or invalid accesses.

Implementation Highlights

• Templating: Provides flexibility for creating linked lists of any data type.
• Encapsulation: Public methods manage the linked list, while implementation details are hidden in private members.
• Dynamic Memory Safety: Uses raw pointers with careful allocation and deallocation for node management.

Testing

Comprehensive tests were written to validate each functionality:

• Basic operations such as insertion, deletion, and retrieval.
• Edge cases like inserting/removing at the beginning or end of the list.
• Deep copy correctness with the copy constructor and assignment operator.
• Memory management verified with Valgrind to ensure no leaks or errors.

Repository Content

• Source Code: Implementation of the LinkedList class and test cases.
• Makefile: Build system to compile the code and run tests.
• Test Files: Unit tests verifying the correctness and robustness of the implementation.

Authors

Gabby Beddard. Assignment completed as part of a data structures course focusing on linked lists and advanced memory management in C++.