Traversal of Circular Linked List in DSA C - Build from Scratch

Traversal of Circular Linked List

📖 Scenario: Imagine you have a circular queue of people waiting in a circle. You want to visit each person exactly once and say hello. This is like traversing a circular linked list where the last person points back to the first.

🎯 Goal: You will create a circular linked list with three nodes, then write code to traverse it and print each node's data exactly once.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a circular linked list with three nodes containing data 10, 20, and 30

Set up a pointer to start traversal from the head node

Write a loop to traverse the circular linked list and print each node's data once

Print the data values separated by spaces on one line

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Circular linked lists are used in real-world applications like round-robin scheduling, multiplayer games where players take turns in a circle, and buffering data streams.

💼 Career

Understanding circular linked lists helps in system programming, game development, and designing efficient data structures for continuous looping tasks.

1

Create a circular linked list with three nodes

Create three nodes called node1, node2, and node3 of type struct Node. Assign node1->data = 10, node2->data = 20, and node3->data = 30. Link them so that node1->next = node2, node2->next = node3, and node3->next = node1 to form a circular linked list.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    int data;
    struct Node* next;
};

int main() {
    // Create three nodes and link them circularly
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use malloc to create nodes and set their data and next pointers to form a circle.

2

Set a pointer to the head node for traversal

Create a pointer called current and set it to point to node1 to start traversal from the head of the circular linked list.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    int data;
    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->data = 10;
    node2->data = 20;
    node3->data = 30;

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

    // Set current pointer to node1
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use a pointer variable current to start at the head node node1.

3

Traverse the circular linked list and print each node's data

Write a do-while loop that prints current->data followed by a space, then moves current to current->next. Continue looping until current is again node1 to ensure each node is printed exactly once.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    int data;
    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->data = 10;
    node2->data = 20;
    node3->data = 30;

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

    struct Node* current = node1;

    // Traverse and print data
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use a do-while loop to print each node's data and move to the next node until you return to the start.

4

Print the traversal output

Add a printf statement to print a newline character \n after the traversal loop to end the output cleanly.

DSA C

#include 
#include 

struct Node {
    int data;
    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->data = 10;
    node2->data = 20;
    node3->data = 30;

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

    struct Node* current = node1;

    do {
        printf("%d ", current->data);
        current = current->next;
    } while (current != node1);

    // Print newline
    // Your code here

    return 0;
}

Hint

Use printf("\n") to print a newline after the loop.