Thread: simple pointer and struct question

Originally Posted by CommonTater

I think tha'ts arguable at best Elysia. By and large I like your posts, you are one of the most helpful people here and that can only be a good thing.

I agree it may hurt readability for those not accustomed to it but what do you do when you have to work with it day in day out? You get used to it and that would be the issue here; what you get used to.

The windows tactic is to define a struct and pointer together, prefixing the pointer with either P or LP according to rules not entirely clear. If you ever do windows programming --and most of us will-- you do need to be comfortable with the notations.

So... I wouldn't expound on one while panning the other... in all truth, we need to know both.

I have worked with Windows Programming, so I do know. I am accustomed to it, yet I don't like it.
Anyway, the point is, that you are right in a sense. You do have to get used to it, but that doesn't mean you should blindly follow that style yourself.
Just as you learn to put your own style to use. As would you do with this!
I really would like newbies not to use pointer typedefs until they experienced enough. I don't want to teach them bad habits when they start out.
Learning to interpret others styles is not the same as adopting their styles. That's all I want to point out on that subject.

Originally Posted by laserlight

I think that it really depends on the situation; I don't see how a typedef of an opaque pointer type would be a bad idea. (And in a smarter version of the program, StupidList might be just such a pointer type )

There might probably be some use somewhere, but programmers will find those in time. For the time being--and especially in small programs like this--they serve no use other use than to obfuscate. At least, such is my opinion. And I clearly want the newbies to understand this.

Elysia,

Nicely done. Thank you for such a complete response. I do truly respect your opinion and your style....

CommonTater,

The OP indicated that they were a beginner ("...very new to C..."), the declaration just seemed to over complicate the issue...which I understood to be with the pointer data type, rather than the extravagant declaration of pointer types -- which in opinion obscures their handling.

I've seen and worked with quite a bit of the Windows API since 3.1, and I thought it not surprising that it was so frequently unstable. In fact, in order to avoid bone-headed errors, I would avoid the typedef-ed declarations all together and type the name of the data type if there were any issues with it at all. Especially, when I was module testing or debugging....

Of course, I realize that experience and proficiency brought with them some finesse, it just seemed to distract the point from the problem the OP had is all. I didn't mean to under-mind any one's reply, I just thought it odd, so I asked. If the Windows crew wishes for my opinion, I will share such a sentiment with them...of course, I think I may have missed the boat on that one .

By the way, thank you for the replies, again.

Best Regards,

New Ink -- Henry