Time complexity of inserting a node in a sorted linked list

Question

What is the time complexity of inserting a node in a sorted linked list in Java? Is there an algorithm with complexity less than O(n) ?

Answer 1

If all you have is a linked links and you're starting from the head, in the worst case you have to iterate over the entire list to find the insertion point. This gives O(n) worst-case time.

Something like a skiplist could give O(log n) insertion. However, that's a different data structure to what you're asking about (and so are trees etc).