Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU!LEICHTER
From: LEICHTER@VENUS.YCC.YALE.EDU ("Jerry Leichter ", LEICHTER-JERRY@CS.YALE.EDU)
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: Re: VAX C typedef oddity
Message-ID: <8808031205.AA26447@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: 31 Jul 88 20:20:00 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 13


	...FILE is being defined as "pointer to _iobuf structure", the spacing
	on either side of the asterisk being ignored.

	But this seems strange -- every other system defines FILE not as a
	pointer type, but a structure type?  Very odd.  What is going on here?

FILE is an "opaque type"; programs really have no business trying to look
inside a FILE object, whatever it has been implemented as.  It happened to be
more convenient for the VAX C RTL to add a level of indirection; you'd have
to look through the internal details to figure out why.  What's the big deal?

							-- Jerry