How is it that the structure pointer is declared with same name of the structure?

[vivek nandan]

The following code,

struct devinfo{
int a;
int b;
};
struct devinfo *devinfo;

is perfectly legal in C. How is it that the structure pointer is declared with same name of the structure? Does it has a special meaning or significance? Any help will be appreciated.

[Banfa]

structure names and variable names are stored in a different name space within the compiler so it is perfectly valid to use the structure name as the name of a variable (in this case a pointer to a structure of the type named).

It has no special significance.

[vivek nandan]

thanks banfa!

[donbock]

It has no special significance to the compiler; however it ought to have significance to you the programmer. Using the same name for unrelated things is a good way to get really confused.