You can't call `std::list<Node>::erase()` with a Node* , and you can't write a function that converts from Node* to `std::list<Node>::iterator` in standard C++, even though it's really just a matter of subtracting a fixed number of bytes from the pointer value. So you instead need to store the `std::list<Node>::iterator` in the `Node`, wasting memory.

You can kind of cheat by always using `std::list<Node>::iterator` instead of Node* , but that means you can't use normal methods, because the `this` pointer will lack access to the iterator. And you always need to pass around a pair of `std::list&` and iterator, because the iterator alone isn't sufficient to delete the node or insert elements before/after it. Usually the code ends up being a lot simpler if class Node just reimplements a linked list.

And that's still the simple case where each node is only contained in a single data structure at a time, which (at least in compilers) is rarely sufficient.