Why should we typedef a struct so often in C?

Question

I have seen many programs consisting of structures like the one below

typedef struct 
{
    int i;
    char k;
} elem;

elem user;

Why is i

Answer 1

the name you (optionally) give the struct is called the tag name and, as has been noted, is not a type in itself. To get to the type requires the struct prefix.

GTK+ aside, I'm not sure the tagname is used anything like as commonly as a typedef to the struct type, so in C++ that is recognised and you can omit the struct keyword and use the tagname as the type name too:

    struct MyStruct
    {
      int i;
    };

    // The following is legal in C++:
    MyStruct obj;
    obj.i = 7;