Return a Position!

  • Explain how Position is different from the Node (inner) class.

Here is the implementation of addFirst from an earlier exercise:

public void addFirst(T data) {
  Node<T> node = new Node<>(data);
  node.next = head;
  head.prev = node;
  head = node;
}

Exercise Update addFirst to return the newly added node (position) which contains the given data value.

public Position<T> addFirst(T data) {
  // TODO Implement Me!
  return null;
}
Solution
public Position<T> addFirst(T data) {
  Node<T> node = new Node<>(data);
  node.next = head;
  head.prev = node;
  head = node;
  return node;
}

Notice we can directly return a value of type Node where a Position is expected. This works because of "type substitution."