Is typedef ever required in C?

Question

Typedef is very useful for portable names, tag names (typedef struct foo Foo;) and keeping complicated (function) declarations readable (typedef int (*cmpfunc

Answer 1

Individual programmers are not required to create their own typedefs. There's no universal rule saying I can't write things like

int *(*(*x())[5])();

if I so desire (although my company's coding standards may frown on it).

They're all over the standard library, however (FILE, size_t, etc.), so you really can't avoid using typedef names.