Create a Circular Singly Linked List in DSA C - Build from Scratch

Create a Circular Singly Linked List

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are building a simple music playlist app. The songs play in a loop, so after the last song, it goes back to the first song automatically. To do this, you need a circular list where the last song points back to the first.

🎯 Goal: You will create a circular singly linked list in C that holds three songs. Each node will have a song name and a pointer to the next song. The last song will point back to the first, making the list circular.

📋 What You'll Learn

Define a struct Node with a char* for the song name and a struct Node* for the next pointer

Create three nodes with song names: "Song1", "Song2", and "Song3"

Link the nodes so that the last node points back to the first node

Print the song names in the circular list once, starting from the first node

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Circular linked lists are used in music players, round-robin schedulers, and games where items repeat in a loop.

💼 Career

Understanding circular linked lists helps in system programming, embedded systems, and software that requires cyclic data processing.

1

Define the Node structure and create three nodes

Define a struct Node with a char* song and a struct Node* next. Then create three nodes called node1, node2, and node3 with song names "Song1", "Song2", and "Song3" respectively.

DSA C

# Define struct Node and create node1, node2, node3 with songs
// Your code here

Hint

Use malloc to create nodes and assign song names using the arrow operator ->.

2

Link the nodes to form a circular list

Link the nodes by setting node1->next to node2, node2->next to node3, and node3->next back to node1 to make the list circular.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    char* song;
    struct Node* next;
};

int main() {
    struct Node* node1 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
    struct Node* node2 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
    struct Node* node3 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));

    node1->song = "Song1";
    node2->song = "Song2";
    node3->song = "Song3";

    // Link nodes to form circular list
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Set the next pointer of each node to the next node, and the last node's next to the first node.

3

Traverse the circular list once and print song names

Create a struct Node* variable called current and set it to node1. Use a do-while loop to print current->song and move current to current->next. Stop the loop when current is node1 again.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    char* song;
    struct Node* next;
};

int main() {
    struct Node* node1 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
    struct Node* node2 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
    struct Node* node3 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));

    node1->song = "Song1";
    node2->song = "Song2";
    node3->song = "Song3";

    node1->next = node2;
    node2->next = node3;
    node3->next = node1;

    // Traverse and print songs once
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use a do-while loop to print each song and move to the next node until you reach the first node again.

4

Print the circular list output

Run the program to print the song names in order: Song1, Song2, and Song3, each on its own line.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    char* song;
    struct Node* next;
};

int main() {
    struct Node* node1 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
    struct Node* node2 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));
    struct Node* node3 = (struct Node*)malloc(sizeof(struct Node));

    node1->song = "Song1";
    node2->song = "Song2";
    node3->song = "Song3";

    node1->next = node2;
    node2->next = node3;
    node3->next = node1;

    struct Node* current = node1;
    do {
        printf("%s\n", current->song);
        current = current->next;
    } while (current != node1);

    return 0;
}

// Run the program to see the output

Hint

Make sure your program prints each song name on its own line exactly as shown.