Re: [dwm] C coding question

On 10/2/07, Anselm R. Garbe <arg_AT_suckless.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 04:54:21PM +0200, Juanval wrote:
> > Hi there,
> >
> > I'm revamping my C coding skills (in my university they just teach C++
> > and Java, and I had to learn proper C on my own :-S), and I'm reading
> > the dwm 4.3 as an exercise, as it seems a very elegantly written piece
> > of code.
> >
> > And I was wondering why is Client defined this way:
> > ------------------------------------
> > typedef struct Client Client;
> > struct Client {
> > [...]
> > };
> > ------------------------------------
> > Instead of doing it the same way as, for example, DC:
> > ------------------------------------
> > typedef struct {
> > [...]
> > } DC;
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Are there any functional differences I am missing? To me, they look
> > like they do basically the same thing... :-S
>
> Yes, the first one is a forward declaration of the type Client
> (which is defined as struct Client) because this is used within
> the Client struct itself.
>
> In the second struct DC is not used within the struct itself, so
> a forward declaration would be pointless.

Aaaah, ok, that explains everything. Thanks a lot.

And thanks yiyus for the c-faq link. I'll definitely spend lots of
time on that page :)
Received on Tue Oct 02 2007 - 17:36:41 UTC