Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mailrus!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: self contained pointers to structures
Message-ID: <11690@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 27 Nov 89 20:47:04 GMT
References: <10350@attctc.Dallas.TX.US>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 17

In article <10350@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> bobc@attctc.Dallas.TX.US (Bob Calbridge) writes:
>struct event {
>	struct	event *next;
>};
>Of course, the compiler complains because the definition of the structure is
>incomplete at that point.

What do you mean, "of course"?  That is a perfectly valid C construct and
is in fact quite common.

Some deficient compilers do have a problem with such constructs, and there
are a number of work-arounds possible.  One is

struct event;	/* incomplete type to get entry into symbol table */
struct event {
	struct event *next;	/* should be accepted now */
};