Linked list searches are all about loops really.
Start with the first element.
Break if you're pointing at the element you need.
Repeat to the next element.
Usually the only error condition is if you reach the end of the list, which is taken care of easily enough by breaking if your pointer is NULL.
Assuming that list is a node * which points at the first element, and p is just a temporary node *, every search is gonna look something like this...After this bit of code, p will either have escaped the loop because it reached the end of the list (p == NULL), in which case you know searchVal is not in the list, or it will have escaped the loop because p points at a node, the content of which is searchval (p -> info == searchVal). So, the contents of p are very useful.Code:for (p = list; p != NULL; p = p -> next) { if (p -> info == searchVal) break; }
p = p -> next
is the code that steps from one node to the next. With a normal linked list however, you must understand that whatever node you are pointing at, you don't have any way of accessing information for the previous node. This becomes an issue when inserting nodes, circumvented by the use of two node pointers, the use of a node pointer pointer, or code that looks like this...Code:if (p -> next -> info == searchVal)