Forward declare FILE *

Question

How do I forward declare FILE * in C? I normally do this using struct MyType;, but naturally this doesn\'t appear to be possible.

If behavi

Answer 1

You can't. The standard just states that FILE is "an object type capable of recording all the information needed to control a stream"; it's up to the implementation whether this is a typedef of a struct (whose name you don't know anyway), or something else.

The only portable way to declare FILE is with #include (or in C++).