Question

Simple data structures, for instance linked lists, where the ‘next’ pointer is a smart pointer. When the head node gets deleted, the smart pointer for ‘next’ kicks in and does a recursive delete. For a long list, this quickly blows the stack.

I have had to go back to replace these smart pointers with simple, raw pointers. Am I missing something here?

Answer 1

Assuming I’ve understood you right and both head and next are smart pointers you can avoid this by doing:

head = head->next;

Or equivalent. Your ‘old’ head will get deleted and the old second place item will get promoted to the head. All in one consistent change, with no deep recursion. The only pre-condition to this is that head is not NULL to begin with.

As Mike pointed out in the comment if the goal is to delete the whole list then you can repeat that within a loop.