Deleting Nodes from a Linked List

Now that we have creation in place, it is probably good to also add in the code to delete a list. Copilot wants to put the code to add a node to the list, but we can feed it a new comment prompt to get it going on the delete code.

Here is the comment I used, and the code it generated. I like to clear up the data as things are freed, so I added in some additional comments to get it clearing up the data as we go.

/**
 * Delete a linked list.
 *
 * @tparam T The type of the data that will be stored in the list.
 * @param list A pointer to the linked list to delete.
 */

You are also likely to need to add in the call to the destructor, in case we are creating a dynamic array of C++ values.

• My code for if you get stuck

  /**
   * Delete a linked list.
   *
   * @tparam T The type of the data that will be stored in the list.
   * @param list A pointer to the linked list to delete.
   */
  template <typename T>
  void delete_linked_list(linked_list<T> *list)
  {
      node<T> *current = list->first;
      while (current != nullptr)
      {
          node<T> *next = current->next;
          // Clear data from node
          current->data.~T(); // C++ destructor
          current->next = nullptr;
          free(current);
          current = next;
      }
      // Clear old data from list
      list->first = nullptr;
      list->last = nullptr;
      free(list);
  }