Question

I need to implement an auxilliary function, named copyList, having one parameter, a pointer to a ListNode. This function needs to return a pointer to the first node of a copy of original linked list. So, in other words, I need to code a function in C++ that takes a header node of a linked list and copies that entire linked list, returning a pointer to the new header node. I need help implementing this function and this is what I have right now.

Listnode *SortedList::copyList(Listnode *L) {

    Listnode *current = L;  //holds the current node

    Listnode *copy = new Listnode;
    copy->next = NULL;

    //traverses the list
    while (current != NULL) {
       *(copy->student) = *(current->student);
       *(copy->next) = *(current->next);

        copy = copy->next;
        current = current->next;
    }
    return copy;
}

Also, this is the Listnode structure I am working with:

struct Listnode {    
  Student *student;
  Listnode *next;
};

Note: another factor I am running into with this function is the idea of returning a pointer to a local variable.

Answer 1

The first question you need to ask yourself is what the copy semantics are. In particular, you’re using a Student* as node contents. What does copying node contents mean? Should we copy the pointer so that the two lists will point to (share) the same student instances, or should you perform a deep copy?

struct Listnode {    
  Student *student; // a pointer?  shouldn't this be a `Student` object?
  Listnode *next;
};

The next question you should ask yourself is how you will allocate the nodes for the second list. Currently, you only allocate 1 node in the copy.

I think you code should look more like:

Listnode *SortedList::copyList(Listnode *L) {

    Listnode *current = L;

    // Assume the list contains at least 1 student.
    Listnode *copy = new Listnode;
    copy->student = new Student(*current->student);
    copy->next = NULL;

    // Keep track of first element of the copy.
    Listnode *const head = copy;

    // 1st element already copied.
    current = current->next;

    while (current != NULL) {
       // Allocate the next node and advance `copy` to the element being copied.
       copy = copy->next = new Listnode;

       // Copy the node contents; don't share references to students.
       copy->student = new Student(*current->student);

       // No next element (yet).
       copy->next = NULL;

       // Advance 'current' to the next element
       current = current->next;
    }

    // Return pointer to first (not last) element.
    return head;
}

---

If you prefer sharing student instances between the two lists, you can use

copy->student = current->student;

instead of

copy->student = new Student(*current->student);