All,
If I were to write a function to delete a node (given headNode and data as input parameters) from a linkedList in Java. I would find the node that has “node.data=data”, and delete it by pointing its previous node to its next node *^. My question is, do we have to point the “to be deleted” node to null? to free the memory? or the GC will take care of objects no more accessed in heap.
*^: say A->B->C->D , if B.data=data, then make A->C . is B->Null necessary?
please let me know if its not clear, I will edit it. Thanks.
As everyone has said you don’t need to set it to null. I just want to add that I had a similar question before which might not be obvious. If you have a doubly linked list, where each node references the previous and the next node, for example A-B-C-D and you remove C-D so that you’re left with A-B. You also do not need to worry about C or D even though both of them still have a reference to them (from the other one). Apparently the GC is smart enough to take care of that case as well