Linked List Tutorial sample code question

Hello everybody,

http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/c/lesson15.html

in the sample code of that Tutorial, which shows how one can traverse a linked list, there are some things I don't understand. Here is the part of the code. I've added a comment to the line I don't understand:

Code:

---

/*...*/
struct node {
  int x;
  struct node *next;
};

int main()
{
    /* This won't change, or we would lose the list in memory */
    struct node *root;     
    /* This will point to each node as it traverses the list */
    struct node *conductor; 

    root = malloc( sizeof(struct node) ); 
    root->next = 0;  /* QUESTION: Why giving root->next a null pointer? */
    root->x = 12;
    conductor = root;
    if ( conductor != 0 ) {
        while ( conductor->next != 0)
        {
            conductor = conductor->next;
        }
    }
    /*...*/
}

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Why is root->next set to a null pointer? Isn't root->next a null pointer by default?
Furthermore, there are 2 things I don't understand:

1. What is the use for "if ( conductor != 0 )" when they just wrote conductor = root before?

2. What is the goal of "while ( conductor->next != 0)"? If you just wrote "root->next = 0; conductor = root;" then is "conductor->next" in any case also 0! So the checking "while ( conductor->next != 0)" doesn't make any sense, because it's always 0.

1.
if ( conductor != 0 )
is a roundabout way of checking if malloc was able to allocate memory to root. If no memory was allocated malloc returns a NULL pointer address.

2.
The code at hand is going to be part of a more complete linked list agorithm. The conditional will check if the loop has reached the end of a linked list. As it stands now, it doesn't do anything.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by yougene

1.
if ( conductor != 0 )
is a roundabout way of checking if malloc was able to allocate memory to root. If no memory was allocated malloc returns a NULL pointer address.

---

I agree with that - however the code is then broken, as it accesses root->next and root->x before checking that the pointer is non-null. Bad coding.

Edit: thinking about it, it probably makes more sense with Yougene's comment #2: This comes from a bigger project, and that check is essentially "Is the list completely empty".

--
Mats