library: minor tweaks of program logic and/or comments

library: minor tweaks of program logic and/or comments

This commit just corrects the oversight wherein 'item'
was being employed when 'these' was actually intended.

Also, it trades some 'item' use for a more descriptive
input parameter which henceforth is known as a 'dest'.

And, there was one leftover 'next' pointer eliminated.

Finally, some logic was made a tad less dependent upon
enumerator names and a few comments were also updated.

Signed-off-by: Jim Warner <james.warner@comcast.net>