Thread: Deleting from linked list

I've been working my way through SAMS teach yourself C for Linux programming over the last year and have recently been studying linked lists.

To delete from the middle of a linked list the book says to do this:

struct person *current1, *current2;

You should go through the list until current1 points to the element before the one you want to delete then:

current2 = current1->next;

current2 now also points to the element.


free(current1->next);
current1->next = current2->next;

What I am not understanding though is the above. current2 points to the memory current1->next points to, when you free current1->next you are deallocating the memory that current2 points to and current2->next would havel be stored here so how can you be expected to you assign current current2->next to current1->next if you have dellocated the memory current2 points to?

Ugh. Idiotic book.
You're right in this case. You should update the pointer before calling free. Otherwise you will be invoking undefined behavior.