Why do linked lists use pointers instead of storing nodes inside of nodes

Question

I\'ve worked with linked lists before extensively in Java, but I\'m very new to C++. I was using this node class that was given to me in a project just fine

Answer 1

You use a pointer, otherwise your code:

class Node
{
   //etc
   Node m_next; //non-pointer
};

…would not compile, as the compiler cannot compute the size of Node. This is because it depends on itself — which means the compiler cannot decide how much memory it would consume.