Linked Lists - Building Java Programs: A Back to Basics Approach - page 935

Our linked list now looks like this:

2 3

1

data
2

next data

4

next

p

5 6

4

data
3

next data

9

next
/

q

Now that we've used the value of box 4 to reset box 3, we can reset box 4. It's
supposed to point to the node that has 9 in it. Now we can leapfrog over the current
node to which it is pointing:

q = q.next;

Our linked list now looks like this:

2 3

1

data
2

next data

4

next

p

5 6

4

data
3

next data

9

next
/ q

Now we just have to reset box 5. In the original picture we would have
referred to box 5 as q.next , but now that we've changed the value of q , we have to
change the way we refer to this box. We can still get to box 5 by starting with the
variable p :

p.next.next.next = null;

Our linked list now looks like this:

2 3

1

data
2

next data

4

next

p

5 6

4

data
3

next
/

data
9

next
/

q