the purpose of offsetof/CONTAINING_RECORD is so that you don't "see" the pointer arithmetic, it's safely ensconced in a macro ;) one advantage is it produces a

the purpose of offsetof/CONTAINING_RECORD is so that you don't "see" the pointer arithmetic, it's safely ensconced in a macro ;) one advantage is it produces a generic linked list API. you can write routines to traverse, add, and remove elements from the list without caring about the structure of data stored in the list. if you use offsetof, you can also have the list data for a structure at any position inside of the structure instead of the beginning. some systems do that so they can store header information at the beginning. you can also have elements enqueued on multiple lists. you might say that if you're doing that, you have bigger problems, but sometimes shakespere got to get paid.