What is the time complexity of searching for an element by value in a linked list?

In a linked list (LinkedList), searching for an element by value requires sequential traversal of the elements, starting from the head of the list, until the desired element is found or the list ends. Therefore, the time complexity of the search is O(n), where n is the number of elements in the list.

Example in Java:

LinkedList<String> list = new LinkedList<>();
list.add("apple");
list.add("banana");
list.add("cherry");

boolean containsBanana = list.contains("banana"); // Traverses elements until "banana" is found

The contains() method iterates over the elements sequentially, which determines its linear complexity.