Prefixes in member names of a struct

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Consider

struct iovec {
   ptr_t iov_base; /* Starting address */
   size_t iov_len; /* Length in bytes */
};

or

struct stat {
dev_t     st_dev;     /* ID of device containing file */
ino_t     st_ino;     /* inode number */
mode_t    st_mode;    /* protection */
nlink_t   st_nlink;   /* number of hard links */
uid_t     st_uid;     /* user ID of owner */
gid_t     st_gid;     /* group ID of owner */
dev_t     st_rdev;    /* device ID (if special file) */
off_t     st_size;    /* total size, in bytes */
blksize_t st_blksize; /* blocksize for file system I/O */
blkcnt_t  st_blocks;  /* number of 512B blocks allocated */
time_t    st_atime;   /* time of last access */
time_t    st_mtime;   /* time of last modification */
time_t    st_ctime;   /* time of last status change */
};

What's the point of prefixing those member names (iov_, st_)?

1 Answers
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