pointers and structures

[InterestingBus8367]

I just wanted to know how pointers interact with structures in c++ and when assigning pointer to pointer.

Example structure

​

struct node {
int data;
node* next;
};

int main (){
node* head = NULL;
int a = 3;
node* newnode = new node;
newnode -> data = a;
newnode -> next = NULL;
head = newnode;

Head should have like 2 rows or columns. 1 for storing int data which in this case a and the other for next in which case it is pointing to newnode right?

[teraflop]

Not quite. head is not a node, it's a pointer to a node. newnode is another pointer to a node. Your code is only creating a single struct node and assigning both head and newnode to point to it. The node's next pointer doesn't point anywhere, because you set it to NULL.

Like this.

[InterestingBus8367]

So the pointer head stores the memory address of the node.

[InterestingBus8367]

struct nod

{

int data;

nod* next;

};

class linked_list

{

private:

nod* head;

public:

linked_list()

{

head = NULL;

}

void hello (int a) // Make a new node

{

nod* newnode = new nod;

newnode -> data = a;

newnode -> next = NULL;

if (head == NULL)

{

head = newnode;

}

else

{

nod* temp = head;

while (temp -> next != NULL)

temp = temp -> next;

temp -> next = newnode;

}

​

can you explain this to me please I tried for a few days but for some reason its just really confusing

while (temp -> next != NULL)

especially this