The 2nd one would be significantly more readable with explicit typing (to make it clear that you're dealing with a pointer to pointer). Though I think putting

The 2nd one would be significantly more readable with explicit typing (to make it clear that you're dealing with a pointer to pointer). Though I think putting the head check at the beginning like you said will make the first example very reasonable (and relatively compact too). remove_list_entry(entry) { if (head == entry) { head = entry->next; } else { prev = head; while (prev->next != entry) { prev = prev->next; } prev->next = entry->next; } }