How typedef works for function pointers

Question

I think I may be suffering from the dreaded \"accidental programmer\" disease, at least when it comes to typedefs and function pointers. So I\'ve been experimenting with all

Answer 1

The address of a function name and the plain function name both mean the same thing, so & has no effect on a function name.

Similarly, when using function pointers, multiple dereferencing isn't a problem:

#include 
typedef void print(void);
static void dosomething(void) { printf("Hello World\n"); }

int main(void)
{
    print *f1 = dosomething;
    print *f2 = &dosomething;
    f2();
    (f1)();
    (*f1)();
    (**f2)();
    (***f1)();
    (****f2)();
    (*****f1)();
}

That compiles cleanly under:

gcc -O3 -g -Wall -Wextra -Werror -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes \
    -Wold-style-definition -std=c99 xx.c -o xx

I would not claim that multiple stars is good style; it isn't. It is 'odd, and (yes, you may say it) perverse'. One is sufficient (and the one star is mainly for people like me who learned to program in C before the standard said "it is OK to call a function via a pointer without using the (*pointer_to_function)(arg1, arg2) notation; you can just write pointer_to_function(arg1, arg2) if you like"). Yes, it is weird. No, no other type (or class of types) exhibits the same behaviour, thank goodness.