Short Link Chain

A short-ring chain refers to a chain where the path lengths between nodes on a ring are smaller than the length of the ring. Specifically, a short ring chain is a linked list composed of a series of nodes, where the last node points to a node in the linked list, forming a ring. The length of this ring is smaller than the length of the linked list.
Short ring chains are often used to solve problems such as finding whether a ring exists in a linked list, or finding the starting node of a ring. A common solution is to use fast and slow pointers. The fast pointer moves forward two nodes at a time, and the slow pointer moves forward one node at a time. If there is a cycle, the fast pointer will catch up with the slow pointer.
Short-ring chains can also be used to implement some data structures, such as circular queues. A circular queue is a special queue whose tail pointer can be looped to the head of the queue to form a ring. This can maximize the use of queue space and improve efficiency.
In short, short-link chain is a special linked list structure with some specific application scenarios and solutions.