LinkedList : Messing with head pointer

During my recent course of practice with LinkedList , i experienced many problems are related to keeping track of right Head pointer of the list . Whether its a Swapping Nodes without swapping data or simple insertion and deletion of nodes.

Pointer :  When dealing with Swapping Nodes , Insertion and Deletion at head , if the pointer to previous Node is NULL  , then it means First Node is  under consideration


This is how I approach :

Node* prevNode = NULL ; 
Node* ptr = head;

for(int i = 0 ; i < position ; ++ i
{
      prevNode = ptr;
      ptr = ptr->next;
}


if( prevNode == NULL )
{
     //  manipulate head pointer here
}

Checkout Swapping Nodes without swapping data for a real life problem