It occurred to me, after writing about linked lists yesterday, that you might want to do this:

var myList = new LinkedList.Circular();
myList.append(foo);
myList.append(bar);
myList.first = baz;

Doing that would break the list: baz does not (we assume) have correct prev and next pointers set. And so we have another use for the LinkedList.Node: you can change its data property and leave its pointers intact:

var myList = new LinkedList.Circular();
myList.append(new LinkedList.Node(foo));
myList.append(new LinkedList.Node(bar));
myList.first.data = baz;

You’ve just changed the first item in the list, but its placeholder in the list remains unchanged.

I also mentioned that you might want to use nodes if you need to include items in multiple lists: several nodes can have their data property point to the same object. But, you can also, should you wish, include the same item multiple times in the same list:

var myList = new LinkedList.Circular();
myList.append(new LinkedList.Node(foo));
myList.append(new LinkedList.Node(bar));
myList.append(new LinkedList.Node(foo));

That list has three distinct nodes, but the first and last nodes both point to foo. So you could use this, for example, to make a queue of operations where some actions need to be repeated at different points in the sequence.