A Deep Dive Into Intrusive Linked Lists
A recent write-up explores intrusive linked lists, a data structure design pattern where the linking pointers (next/prev) live directly inside the object being stored, rather than in a separate wrapper node that points to the data.
This approach is common in systems programming, game engines, and operating system kernels because it avoids extra memory allocations and indirection. Instead of allocating a new list node every time you insert an item, the object itself already has the fields needed to be part of a list.
The trade-off is flexibility: an object can typically only belong to one such list at a time (unless it embeds multiple link fields), and the pattern requires careful manual memory management, especially in languages without garbage collection like C and C++.