The First Field

Using the "malloc" function, we request a block of storage on the "heap" and fill it with data. The additional field in this example, the pointer, is assigned the value of NULL, which is only used to indicate that this is the end of the list. We will leave the pointer "start" at this structure, so that it will always point to the first structure of the list. We also assign "prior" the value of "start" for reasons we will see soon. Keep in mind that the end points of a linked list will always have to be handled differently than those in the middle of a list. We have a single element of our list now and it is filled with representative data.