Using an anonymous struct vs a named struct with typedef

Question

When should one of the following statements be used over the other?

typedef struct Foo {
    int a;
} Bar;

and

typedef stru         


        

Answer 1

The term anonymous struct is already used for something else: in nested structs (or unions) that don't have a name at all and whose fields are referred to as if they were entries in the parent.

The actual question about when to use one or the other is that you have to use the first form if you want to add a pointer to its own type inside it like so:

typedef struct Foo { struct Foo* Child; ... } Foo;

However, what I would prefer is to do that with a typedef like so:

typedef struct Foo Foo;
struct Foo {Foo* Child;};