Question

I have this node class, I was wondering how does the program recognize that the Node next is actually the next node? and why would I want to assign it to null please? Detailed explanation would be greatly appreciated.

package LinearNode;
import dataobjects.*;


public class Node
{

public Node next;
public AnyClass obj;

public Node(AnyClass newObj)
{
    next = null; 
    obj = newObj;
}

public void show()
{
    System.out.println(obj.getData());
}

public void editNode()
{
    obj.editData();
}

public Node getNext()
{
    return next;
}
}

Answer 1

It’s the responsibility of the programmer to properly assemble and use the data structures he chooses. The next node points to a reference of what is assumed to be the ‘next’ node in the linked list, but Java can’t tell you if you’ve linked them correctly or not. null is often used to represent the end of the list (as opposed to say a circular linked list, in which case head and tail pointers may be used instead of null). Documentation on the linked list data structure can be found on Wikipedia and also here, though the examples are written in C.