Question

Can anybody tell me when to use typedef in C? In the following code I get a warning by gcc :

warning: useless storage class specifier in empty declaration

typedef struct node
{
  int data;
  struct node* forwardLink;
} ;

Answer 1

So..

You can do this:

struct node {
  int data;
  struct node* forwardLink;
};

To define an object that you can use as struct node.

Like this:

struct node x;

However, say you wanted to refer to it as just node. Then you could do:

struct node {
  int data;
  struct node* forwardLink;
};

typedef struct node node;

or

 typedef struct {
  int data;
  void* forwardLink;
} node;

and then use that as:

node x;