Arrays make sense where the exact number of items will be known, and where searching by index makes sense. For example, if I wanted to store the exact state of my video output at a given moment without compression I would probably use an array of size [1024][768]. This will provide me with exactly what I need, and a list would be much, much slower to get the value of a given pixel. In places where an array does not make sense there are generally better data types than a list to deal with data effectively.

根据你的语言，可以考虑以下一些缺点和优点:

C编程语言:当使用链表(通常是通过结构指针)时，必须特别注意不要泄漏内存。正如前面提到的，链表很容易洗牌，因为我们所做的只是改变指针，但是我们会记得释放所有的东西吗?

Java: Java具有自动垃圾收集功能，因此内存泄漏不会成为问题，但是对于高级程序员来说，隐藏了链表的实现细节。从列表中间删除节点等方法的过程比该语言的一些用户所期望的要复杂得多。

除了插入和删除方便之外，链表的内存表示方式也不同于数组。对于链表中的元素数量没有限制，而在数组中，您必须指定元素的总数。 看看这篇文章。

当集合不断增加和减少时，链表尤其有用。例如，很难想象尝试使用数组实现一个Queue(添加到末尾，从前面删除)—您将花费所有时间向下移动内容。另一方面，对于链表来说，这是微不足道的。

维基百科上有很好的章节介绍了它们的区别。

Linked lists have several advantages over arrays. Elements can be inserted into linked lists indefinitely, while an array will eventually either fill up or need to be resized, an expensive operation that may not even be possible if memory is fragmented. Similarly, an array from which many elements are removed may become wastefully empty or need to be made smaller. On the other hand, arrays allow random access, while linked lists allow only sequential access to elements. Singly-linked lists, in fact, can only be traversed in one direction. This makes linked lists unsuitable for applications where it's useful to look up an element by its index quickly, such as heapsort. Sequential access on arrays is also faster than on linked lists on many machines due to locality of reference and data caches. Linked lists receive almost no benefit from the cache. Another disadvantage of linked lists is the extra storage needed for references, which often makes them impractical for lists of small data items such as characters or boolean values. It can also be slow, and with a naïve allocator, wasteful, to allocate memory separately for each new element, a problem generally solved using memory pools.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_list

为什么是链表而不是数组?有些人已经说过，插入和删除的速度更快。

但也许我们不需要生活在两者的限制下，同时获得两者的优点……是吗?

对于数组删除，您可以使用'Deleted'字节来表示一行已被删除的事实，因此不再需要重新组织数组。为了减轻插入或快速更改数据的负担，可以使用链表。然后，在引用它们的时候，让你的逻辑先搜索一个，再搜索另一个。因此，将它们结合使用可以使您获得两者的最佳效果。

If you have a really large array, you could combine it with another, much smaller array or linked list where the smaller one hold thes 20, 50, 100 most recently used items. If the one needed is not in the shorter linked list or array, you go to the large array. If found there, you can then add it to the smaller linked list/array on the presumption that 'things most recently used are most likey to be re-used' ( and yes, possibly bumping the least recently used item from the list ). Which is true in many cases and solved a problem I had to tackle in an .ASP security permissions checking module, with ease, elegance, and impressive speed.