using typedef in declaring structs in C++

Question

I personally don't like old C-style of struct declarations like that:

typedef struct {} NewType;

ctags makes ugly anon types of this and make the debugging difficult. Is there any reason in C++ code using typedef struct instead of simply struct, except the code is used in both C and C++?

Regards, Valentin

Answer 1

One major drawback of those

typedef struct tagSomethingSomething SomethingSomething;

is that, forward-declarations are not possible with the commonly used typedef'fed name.

Yes, it's a C-ism (kudos sbi) and there are c++-codebases, where it - unfortunately - (still) is common.

Answer 2

That's a C-ism. In C, structs and enums effectively have their one namespaces, so for

struct NewType {};
enum SomeEnum {};

you'd have to write struct NewType and enum SomeEnum to refer to.

In C++ this isn't necessary. So, Unless you write a header which needs to be parsed by a C compiler, too, you shouldn't use this.