Deleting first node in linked list has problems

Question

I\'m implementing a linked list and it needs to have a function that when given a head of a linked list and a cstring, it finds and deletes a node whose value is the cstring.

Answer 1

The first thing to realise is that removing an element from a linked list involves changing exactly one pointer value: the pointer that points at us. This can be the external head pointer that points to the first list element, or one of the ->next pointers inside the list. In both cases that pointer needs to be changed; its new value should become the value of the ->next pointer of the node to be deleted.

In order to change some object (from within a function) we need a pointer to it. We need to change a pointer, so we will need a pointer to pointer.

bool findAndRemove1(node **ptp, char *phrase)
{
    node *del;

    for( ;*ptp; ptp = &(*ptp)->next) {
        if( !strcmp((*ptp)->entry, phrase) ) { break; } //found
        }

      /* when we get here, ptp either
      ** 1) points to the pointer that points at the node we want to delete
      ** 2) or it points to the NULL pointer at the end of the list
      **    (in the case nothing was found)
      */
    if ( !*ptp) return false; // not found

    del = *ptp;
    *ptp = (*ptp)->next;
    free(del);
    return true;
}

The number of if conditions can even be reduced to one by doing the dirty work in the loop,and returning from the loop but that would be a bit of a hack:

bool findAndRemove2(node **ptp, char *phrase)
{

    for( ;*ptp; ptp = &(*ptp)->next) {
        node *del;
        if( strcmp((*ptp)->entry, phrase) ) continue; // not the one we want

          /* when we get here, ptp MUST
          ** 1) point to the pointer that points at the node we want to delete
          */
        del = *ptp;
        *ptp = (*ptp)->next;
        free(del);
        return true;
        }
    return false; // not found
}

But what if the list is not unique, and we want to delete all the nodes that satisfy the condition? We just alter the loop logic a bit and add a counter:

unsigned searchAndDestroy(node **ptp, char *phrase)
{
    unsigned cnt;

    for( cnt=0 ;*ptp; ) {
        node *del;
        if( strcmp((*ptp)->entry, phrase) ) { // not the one we want
             ptp = &(*ptp)->next;
             continue; 
             }
          /* when we get here, ptp MUST point to the pointer that points at the node we wish to delete
          */
        del = *ptp;
        *ptp = (*ptp)->next;
        free(del);
        cnt++;
        }
    return cnt; // the number of deleted nodes
}

Update: and a driver program to test it:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

typedef struct  list {
        struct list *next;
        char entry[20];
        } node;

void node_add( node **ptp, char *str)
{
node *new;

for (   ; *ptp; ptp = &(*ptp)->next) {
        if (strcmp ((*ptp)->entry, str) < 0) continue;
        }
new = malloc (sizeof *new);
strcpy(new->entry, str);
new->next = *ptp;
*ptp = new;
}

int main (void)
{
node *root = NULL;
unsigned cnt;

node_add (& root, "aaa" );
node_add (& root, "aaa" );
node_add (& root, "bbb" );
node_add (& root, "ccc" );
node_add (& root, "aaa" );
cnt = seachAndDestroy( &root, "bbb" );
printf("Cnt(bbb) := %u\n", cnt );
cnt = seachAndDestroy( &root, "ccc" );
printf("Cnt(ccc) := %u\n", cnt );
cnt = seachAndDestroy( &root, "aaa" );
printf("Cnt(aaa) := %u\n", cnt );
printf("Root now = %p\n", (void*) root );

return 0;
}

And the output:

plasser@pisbak:~/usenet$ ./a.out
Cnt(bbb) := 1
Cnt(ccc) := 1
Cnt(aaa) := 3
Root now = (nil)