Typedef

By now, you're probably tired of typing struct Coordinate over and over again, and you're wondering "How can I make my struct types easier to write, like int?"

Good news! C can do this with the typedef keyword.

struct Pastry {
    char *name;
    float weight;
};

This can also be written as:

typedef struct Pastry {
    char *name;
    float weight;
} pastry_t;

Now, you can use pastry_t wherever before you would have used struct Pastry.

In fact, you can optionally skip giving the struct a name:

typedef struct {
    char *name;
    float weight;
} pastry_t;

pastry_t muffin = {"Muffin", 0.3};

In this case you'd only be able to refer to the type as pastry_t. In general, I do give the struct an actual name (e.g. Pastry), but I only use the typedef'd type. We'll be using this convention in this course.