A linked list is a chain of structs or records called nodes. Each node has at least two members, one of which points to the next item or node in the list! These are defined as Single Linked Lists because they only point to the next item, and not the previous. Those that do point to both are called Double Linked Lists.

-------- --------
| data | --->| data |
|--------| | |--------|
| pointer|---- | pointer| ---> NULL
-------- --------


A structure which contains a data element and a pointer to the next node is created by,


struct list {
int value;
struct list *next;
};

This defines a new data structure called list (actually the definition of a node), which contains two members. The first is an integer called value. The second is called next, which is a pointer to another list structure (or node). Suppose that we declare two structures to be of the same type as list, eg,


struct list n1, n2;

The next pointer of structure n1 may be set to point to the n2 structure by


/* assign address of first element in n2 to the pointer next of the n1 structure */
n1.next = &n2;

which creates a link between the two structures.

Example to Illustrate linked lists

    #include <stdio.h>
	    struct list {
		    int         value;
		    struct list *next;
	   };

	    main()
	    {
		    struct list n1, n2, n3;
		    int          i;

		    n1.value = 100;
		    n2.value = 200;
		    n3.value = 300;
		    n1.next = &n2;
		    n2.next = &n3;
		    i = n1.next->value;
		    printf("%d\n", n2.next->value);
	    }