NYUer | LeetCode203 Remove Linked List Elements

LeetCode203 Remove Linked List Elements

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Author: Stefan Su
Create time: 2022-10-27 23:22:32
Location: New York City, NY, USA

Description Easy

Given the head of a linked list and an integer val, remove all the nodes of the linked list that has Node.val == val, and return the new head.

Example 1

Input: head = [1,2,6,3,4,5,6], val = 6
Output: [1,2,3,4,5]

Example 2

Input: head = [], val = 1
Output: []

Example 3

Input: head = [7,7,7,7], val = 7
Output: []

Constrains

• The number of nodes in the list is in the range [0, 10⁴].
• 1 <= Node.val <= 50
• 0 <= val <= 50

Analysis

This problem can be solved in two ways. The first way is addressing the first node in the linked list independently. But I recommend we can add a dummy node, which is also called sentinel, at the beginning of this linked list. And then go through the whole linked list until find the target val. The next step is deletion. cur.next = cur.next.next is a way to delete that node and the memory will be released in Python automatically.

Solution

• Dummy node version. (Sentinel)

# Definition for singly-linked list.
# class ListNode(object):
#     def __init__(self, val=0, next=None):
#         self.val = val
#         self.next = next
class Solution(object):
    def removeElements(self, head, val):
        """
        :type head: ListNode
        :type val: int
        :rtype: ListNode
        """
        dummy_head = ListNode(next=head)
        cur = dummy_head
        while cur.next != None:
            if cur.next.val == val:
                cur.next = cur.next.next
            else:
                cur = cur.next
        return dummy_head.next

Hopefully, this blog can inspire you when solving LeetCode203. For any questions, please comment below.