You are setting currNode and prevNode in the wrong order in your loop incrementer. Also, the variable name "prevNode" is misleading because it is not the previo

You are setting currNode and prevNode in the wrong order in your loop incrementer. Also, the variable name "prevNode" is misleading because it is not the previous node, it's the link from the previous node to the current node. Let's change it to "prevLink". For the first iteration through your loop, prevLink = &list_head currNode = list_head Second, prevLink = list_head->next currNode = list_head /* (again) */ Third, prevLink = list_head->next->next currNode = list_head->next In other words, from the second iteration on, prevLink is actually nextLink, that is, currNode->next. Here's my take: typedef struct node { /* ...some fields... */ struct node *next; } Node; void foobar(Node *node_list) { Node **prev_link; Node *current_node; Node *list_head = node_list; for (current_node = list_head, prev_link = &list_head; current_node != NULL; prev_link = &(current_node->next), current_node = *prev_link) { /* ...do something... */ if (must_remove(current_node)) { *prev_link = current_node->next; free(current_node); } } } This code compiles with no warnings, so it must be perfect. :) The beauty of it is that by doing it this way, you don't need to special-case the list head at all. You could do something like foobar(&(actual_list_head->next)) and have foobar() run on every element except the first one, and it would just work.