Editing C++ (section)

===Don't typedef away indirection===

This kind of thing was popular once:

 typedef int* intP;
 typedef int** intPP;

The reason was is it allows this kind of declaration:

 intP A, B;  // A and B are both pointers to int

and avoids this mistake:

 int* A, B;  // Oops, meant to declate A and B as pointers to an int, but B is actually declared int.

It's better to always declare one variable per line.  Using typedef to hide indirection is not good practice, because other programmers actually need to know whether the thing in question is a pointer, or a pointer to a pointer, or whatever, in order to use in correctly.  This is doubly important in C++, where there are two possible methods of indirection (pointers and references) and the rules for using them are different.