typedef all structs - yes, helps with conciseness. Use typedefs liberally, I say. But only typedef the things themselves, not pointers to the things. You can always use (type *) when you need a pointer. In particular, for function pointers, typedef the function, not the function pointer. Then you can use the function typedef for function declarations too, which gives you parameter type checking without needing to fix declarations everywhere if you change a function signature. I see most C codebases get this one wrong, typedef'ing the function pointer and still needing to manually write out all function declarations for that pointer definition.
I'm not sold on the structs as return types thing. I prefer just a numeric error code as a return value, and out parameters for any other returns.
I prefer to use typedef's for opaque structs to emulate classes with all private fields, and use 'struct' for plain ol' data structures. Classes should only be accessed via functions, while structs can be accessed directly.
I think this is more-or-less a C/POSIX standard convention. E.g., `pthread_t` vs. `struct stat`.
> I prefer to use typedef's for opaque structs to emulate classes with all private fields, and use 'struct' for plain ol' data structures. Classes should only be accessed via functions, while structs can be accessed directly.
That's all fine, but you cannot have nicely behaved stack allocated structs and use the data hiding method outlined in that blog post, which I think is a pretty big caveat
Yes, allowing clients to control allocation of a struct is a crucial feature of any C API, especially if it's going to be used on embedded targets where heap is unavailable or restricted.
The pattern I like to use for this is to expose class definitions, and declare each field with an underscore suffix to indicate it's private.
> But only typedef the things themselves, not pointers to the things.
I agree with this. One of the things I dislike about SDL_net, etc, is they do exactly what you're describing. It's a pointer but they typedef it as if it's a value type.
I'm not sold on the structs as return types thing. I prefer just a numeric error code as a return value, and out parameters for any other returns.