What is a common pattern for deletion in a linked list?

• A. Using two pointers: one to the node before the one to delete, and one to the node to delete
• B. Deleting by reassigning the head to null
• C. Replacing the node to delete with a zero node
• D. Deleting the tail regardless of position

Answer: (A)

Deleting a node in a linked list means unlinking it by changing pointers so the previous node now points to the node after the one being removed. In a singly linked list you can’t go backward, so you track the node before the target as you traverse. When you find the node to delete, you update the previous node’s next reference to skip the target by pointing to its next node, effectively removing it from the chain. This approach handles deletion in the middle or at the end cleanly, and you only need special handling for deleting the head (update the head to head.next). If you’re removing the tail, the new tail’s next becomes null. If the language requires manual memory management you would free the removed node; otherwise, you simply discard references. The other ideas don’t describe the general unlinking pattern: resetting the head to null would erase the whole list, replacing with a zero node isn’t a real unlink, and deleting the tail regardless of position won’t remove the correct node unless you know it’s tail.