Question

More specifically, I am wondering why we use pointers in a typical linked list implementation. Are there any problems that the following implementation of a Node might cause?

template <typename T>
class Node {
    T data;
    Node<T>& next;
    Node<T>& prev;
};

Is there some reason we should use pointers here instead of references?

Answer 1

You can’t set references after creating them, which makes a non-mutable linked-list implementation somewhat tricky. (You’d need to wrap the references in objects that you can re-crate when you want to change the reference).

There’s also no way to set a NULL value on a reference, so representing the ends of your list would require some imagination.

Probably better to stick to pointers in a linked list, or even better, use std::list<>.