[alsa-devel] dereferencing pointer error in app but not in lib

[Clemens Ladisch]

intellij wrote:
> In the library, like pcm.c I can code like
> 
> const char *snd_pcm_name(snd_pcm_t pcm) {
>   return pcm->name;
> }
> 
> At the same time, the same code in the application causes "dereferencing
> pointer to incomplete type" error. Note, the compiler does not tell that
> there is no such field in the pcm structure. It just thinks that the name
> has another type. Which one? 

The type is the same, it's just incomplete (= not yet defined).
The library does this to prevent applications from accessing the fields
so that the API stays binary compatible.


HTH
Clemens