> but I would argue that if you use the tag sometimes, then you might as well use it consistently every time you declare a struct. There is no harm in it. Sure

> but I would argue that if you use the tag sometimes, then you might as well use it consistently every time you declare a struct. There is no harm in it. Sure, but that's a preference. Which was my point. I'm not against people tagging structs, but I'm also not against typedef'd untagged structs. And clearly the C community at large isn't either. > But struct tags and other names live in different namespaces. I'm aware of where tags live, I just see no necessity in defining something that will never be used. > Your second example could just as well (and without using a __ prefix, which is reserved for the implementation and therefore, strictly speaking, is undefined behavior in user code) be: This is pedantry and off topic. Name it whatever you like. It can be zyzzyx, for all I care; it's an internal tag at this point. You're correct about the __, that was intended to be _; and is simply a preference on my part. I'm not evangelizing it's use. > Arguably, if you "own" the my_struct_t type name, you also have a right to declare "struct my_struct_t". That's not the point. I will never call "struct my_struct_t" outside of a self-referential context. So it's pointless. I could define a tag. I could not. My code will compile the same.