Historical reasons: early C compilers didn't actually keep track of what the type of the LHS was, so they needed `.` vs `->` to properly disambiguate. Later C c

Historical reasons: early C compilers didn't actually keep track of what the type of the LHS was, so they needed `.` vs `->` to properly disambiguate. Later C compilers did start tracking that, so the difference in syntax was no longer necessary, but stuck for reasons of history and backward compatibility https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/10812/why-did-c-use-the-arrow-operator-instead-of-reusing-the-dot-operator https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/10812/why...