A non-linear datastrucutre is a datastructure in which the data items in the memory are not allocated contiguously i.e. the data items are dispersed in the memory. The first data item will have a link to the second data item and second data item will have a link to the third data item and so on.
Pros
- Uses memory efficiently that the free contiguous memory in not an requirement for allocating data items
- The length of the data items is not necessary to be known prior to allocation
Cons
- Overhead of the link to the next data item
Examples of non-linear datastructure are Linked List