Thread: typedef struct

ive seen this a lot, and i have a friend that recently adopted the habit without knowing why its done.

what i am referring to is this:

Code:

typedef struct _tagNameOfStruct
{
   // stuff
} NameOfStruct;

making a typedef of the struct rather than just letting the struct be its own definition.

can someone explain to me the purpose/benefit of doing it this way?

even still, what is the reason for doing it?

>i have a friend that recently adopted the habit without knowing why its done
That's pretty stupid. Why adopt a habit when you don't know its advantages and disadvantages?

>can someone explain to me the purpose/benefit of doing it this way?
In C++ there is no purpose or benefit, but in C it allows the programmer to create variables of the struct type without using the struct keyword:

Code:

struct test0 {
  ...
};

typedef struct test1 {
  ..
} test1;

struct test0 t0; // Legal C
test0 t1; // Illegal C

struct test1 t2; // Legal C
test1 t3; // Legal C

Notice also that both the structure tag and the typedef name can be the same.

In C if you don't typedef you have to do the following to declare a structure variable.

Code:

struct NameOfStruct var;
      instead of
NameOfStruct var;

ah... i see...

thanks for the info