Pointer Manipulation and Placeholder Nodes
Understand how to manage pointers carefully in linked lists by saving references before reassigning and using placeholder nodes to handle edge cases. This lesson teaches you essential skills to avoid common bugs and write clean, interview-ready linked list solutions in Go.
Most linked list bugs come from one of two places: moving a pointer before saving what it points to, or writing a solution that breaks on an empty list or a single-node list. Pointer-manipulation fundamentals address the first. Placeholder (sentinel/dummy) nodes address the second. Together, they cover most of what goes wrong in linked list interviews.
Interview lens: Interviewers use linked list problems to see whether we manage state carefully under pressure. A candidate who reaches for a placeholder node without being prompted, and who saves a pointer before reassigning it, signals strong fundamentals. These are habits that separate polished solutions from ones that need fixing. ... ...