hai
suppose i had a linklist.given the address of a particular node.I had to delete the previous node of the given node.It is not a circular or doubly linked list. also I dont have the address of the starting node of the linkedlist.(This was a job interview question)

well, i'm going to say that's not possible.

*prepares to possibly eat words*

Rest assured...

I would say it aint(safely) possible but someone please correct me if im wrong, I hope this aint a stupid question where you do have an address before the node you wanna delete but its not actually the start of the list. I assume that all you have is the address of a node and the struct of the node - which is what you say above.

if i had to do it i would probably just search the heap for the address i'd been given and try and fit a node stuct over it, if it fitted i'd have the address of the previous node and i'd just delete it normally. i could also use LD_PRELOAD to override malloc() and generate a list of all allocations that you search through, there are architecture dependant solutions such as recording all memory writes with a debug interrupt then check the list against the address you were passed to find where it was written(the previous node) but i think thats going over the top.

I won't say that's impossible, but IMHO it's a bit like deleting a file by means of editing /dev/hda1.

by Hko
I won't say that's impossible, but IMHO it's a bit like deleting a file by means of editing /dev/hda1.

yeah pretty much, and for anything other than demonstration purposes i would never do it and would make that clear in an interview.

LOL. Good point!