Page 18 - DCAP605_ADVANCED_DATA_STRUCTURE_AND_ALGORITHMS

Unit 1: Introduction to Data Structure and Arrays

Notes
Figure 1.3: Node
node

item next

Such structures, which contain a member field that points to the same structure type, are called
self-referential structures. A node may be represented in general form as follows:
Figure 1.4: Structure Declaration for the Node

struct label-name
{
type member1;
type member2;
type member3;
. . . .
. . . .
struct label-name *next;
};

The node may contain more than one item with different data types. However, one of the items
must be a pointer of the type label-name. The above node with all its members can be depicted
as follows:

member1 member2 membern next

node

Consider a simple example to understand the concept of linking. Suppose we defi ne a structure
as follows:
struct list
{
int value;
struct list *next;
};
Assume that the list contains two node viz. node1 and node2. They are of type struct list and are
defined as follows:

struct list node1,node2;

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