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Linked List Traversal

In order to access each node in the list for data processing, we need to create a function that will traverse the list. There are several different uses for list traversal, including printing, searching, data manipulation, etc. Regardless of the use, you must traverse your list in order to really do anything useful with this data structure.

In this example, we will create a function called DisplayList that will display the x and y coordinates of every "enemy" in our list.

void DisplayList(node_t *head)
{
  node_t *current;      // our current node (position)

  // begin at the head of the list
  current = head;

  // loop until done
  while (current != NULL)
  {
    printf("ID = %d\n", current->id);
    current = current->next;
  }
}

Figure 1.4 shows the visualization for list traversal. As you can see, we move the current pointer through each node of the list until it reaches the NULL link at the end.

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