You have a SINGLY linked list in memory of at least 1000 nodes (perhaps many more). I give you a pointer to ONE of the elements. (You don't know to which one.)

Upon examination, you discover that the pointer to the next node is not NULL (indicating that we're not at the last node in the list).

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to delete the current node, and maintain the valid linked list.

First, how do you go about doing that?

Second, how do you go about doing that in fixed space (i.e., you have only 64 bytes of memory as scratch space, so you can't replicate the rest of the linked list in memory, nor store more than 16 4-byte pointers)?

(In reply to re: Passed by by Brian Wainscott)

For what it's worth, if I saw a programmer (who worked for me) do this, I would fire him! :-)

You've already pointed out several potential problems with doing such things. Setting aside the maintenance issues (the next programmer would be scratching his head wondering what to make of the code and hopefully the comments), it'd be much better to use container classes which take care of the implementation.

Let's leave this as a "flooble problem" and do NOT tell your employer that flooble suggested you do such things! :-)

Posted by SilverKnight on 2003-12-04 17:24:27