How to reverse a singly linked list using only two pointers?

Question

I wonder if there exists some logic to reverse a singly-linked list using only two pointers.

The following is used to reverse the single linked list using three pointers namely p, q, r:

struct node {
    int data;
    struct node *link;
};

void reverse() {
    struct node *p = first,
                *q = NULL,
                *r;

    while (p != NULL) {
        r = q;
        q = p;
        p = p->link;
        q->link = r;
    }
    first = q;
}

Is there any other alternate to reverse the linked list? What would be the best logic to reverse a singly linked list, in terms of time complexity?

Answer 1

Any alternative? No, this is as simple as it gets, and there's no fundamentally-different way of doing it. This algorithm is already O(n) time, and you can't get any faster than that, as you must modify every node.

It looks like your code is on the right track, but it's not quite working in the form above. Here's a working version:

#include <stdio.h>

typedef struct Node {
  char data;
  struct Node* next;
} Node;

void print_list(Node* root) {
  while (root) {
    printf("%c ", root->data);
    root = root->next;
  }
  printf("\n");
}

Node* reverse(Node* root) {
  Node* new_root = 0;
  while (root) {
    Node* next = root->next;
    root->next = new_root;
    new_root = root;
    root = next;
  }
  return new_root;
}

int main() {
  Node d = { 'd', 0 };
  Node c = { 'c', &d };
  Node b = { 'b', &c };
  Node a = { 'a', &b };

  Node* root = &a;
  print_list(root);
  root = reverse(root);
  print_list(root);

  return 0;
}