Skip Lists are a data structure that can be used in place of balanced trees. Skip lists use probabilistic balancing rather than strictly enforcing balancing and as a result the algorithms for insertion and deletion in skip lists are much simpler and significantly faster than equivalent algorithms for balanced trees. Skip lists have first been published by William Pugh.

This interactive Java applet allows the user to experiment on the behaviour of skip lists.
The functions offered should be self explaining.
Author: Thomas Wenger, University of Berne, Switzerland

• Insert 10 Random nodes: inserts 10 nodes into the list with randomly generated key and value
• Reset: deletes all nodes in list

• The key- and value-textfields are used to show and read data of a node
• Insert: inserts a new node into the list using the key and value entered in textfields
• Search: searches the node in the list with the key entered in key-textfield
• Delete: deletes the node with the key entered in key-textfield

• If you select a node in the display, its key and value is automatically shown in the textfields