206. Reverse Linked List
Reverse a singly linked list.
xWell, since the head
pointer may also be modified, we create a new_head
that points to it to facilitate the reverse process.
For the example list 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5
in the problem statement, it will become 0 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5
(we init new_head -> val
to be 0
). Then we set a pointerpre
to new_head
and another cur
to head
. Then we keep inserting cur -> next
after pre
until cur
becomes the last node. The code is follows.
class Solution {
public:
ListNode* reverseList(ListNode* head) {
ListNode* new_head = new ListNode(0);
new_head -> next = head;
ListNode* pre = new_head;
ListNode* cur = head;
while (cur && cur -> next) {
ListNode* temp = pre -> next;
pre -> next = cur -> next;
cur -> next = cur -> next -> next;
pre -> next -> next = temp;
}
return new_head -> next;
}
};
This link provides a more concise solution without using the new_head
. The idea is to reverse one node at a time for the beginning of the list. The rewritten code is as follows.
class Solution {
public:
ListNode* reverseList(ListNode* head) {
ListNode* pre = NULL;
while (head) {
ListNode* next = head -> next;
head -> next = pre;
pre = head;
head = next;
}
return pre;
}
};
Well, both of the above solutions are iterative. The hint has also suggested us to use recursion. In fact, the above link has a nice recursive solution, whose rewritten code is as follows.
class Solution {
public:
ListNode* reverseList(ListNode* head) {
if (!head || !(head -> next)) return head;
ListNode* node = reverseList(head -> next);
head -> next -> next = head;
head -> next = NULL;
return node;
}
};
The basic idea of this recursive solution is to reverse all the following nodes after head
. Then we need to set head
to be the final node in the reversed list. We simply set its next node in the original list (head -> next
) to point to it and sets its next
to be NULL
.