Yeah, true. Although, the problem is lessened if properly abstracted away via opacity. MPFR (GNU multi-precision library) typedefs an array of size 1 holding it

Yeah, true. Although, the problem is lessened if properly abstracted away via opacity. MPFR (GNU multi-precision library) typedefs an array of size 1 holding its basic type, as opposed to just typedefing the struct of the basic type. This is (I think) purely so they don't have to put '&' in front of their "objects" when passing them around. While I've great respect for the authors of that fantastic library, I only have this to say about the practice: Jeeesh!