Question

In C, is there a difference between writing ‘struct foo’ instead of just ‘foo’ if foo is a struct?

For example:

struct sockaddr_in sin; struct sockaddr *sa;  // Are these two lines equivalent? sa = (struct sockaddr*)&sin; sa = (sockaddr*)&sin; 

Thanks /Erik

Answer 1

In fact, in standard ‘C’ it’s required to specify struct keyword. This is optional in C++.

This is the reason some people define structs like this:

typedef struct foo { ... } bar; 

to be able to use bar instead of struct foo. However, some C compilers do not enforce this rule.