typedefs and structs

[linas]

On Mon, Nov 07, 2005 at 08:11:13PM -0500, Steven Rostedt was heard to remark:
> On Mon, 2005-11-07 at 14:41 -0600, linas wrote:
> 
> don't use typedef to get rid of "struct".
> 
> This was for the simple reason, too many developers were passing
> structures by value instead of by reference, just because they were
> using a type that they didn't realize was a structure. 

That's a rather bizarre mistake to make, since, in order to 
access a values in such a beast, you have to use a dot . instead 
of an arrow -> and so it hits ou in the face that you passed a value
instead of a reference.

----
Off-topic: There's actually a neat little trick in C++ that can 
help avoid accidentally passing null pointers.  One can declare 
function declarations as:

  int func (sturct blah &v) {
    v.a ++; 
    return v.b;
  }

The ampersand says "pass argument by reference (so as to get arg passing
efficiency) but force coder to write code as if they were passing by value"
As a result, it gets difficult to pass null pointers (for reasons
similar to the difficulty of passing null pointers in Java (and yes,
I loathe Java, sorry to subject you to that))  Anyway, that's a C++ trick 
only; I wish it was in C so I could experiment more and find out if I 
like it or hate it.

--linas