[Solved] Why some C API doesn’t follow Encapsulation

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Consider the following two API variants:

struct point get_location(const foo *f)
{
    struct point p;
    p.x = f->something_x;
    p.y = f->something_y;
    return p;
}

versus:

double get_location_x(const foo *f)
{
    return f->something_x;
}
double get_location_y(const foo *f)
{
    return f->something_y;
}

I claim there is nothing “more encapsulated” about the latter than the former. It’s just a matter of perspective whether you consider the result type of the former to be a value type. Likewise, struct dirent is a value type whose definition is well-specified and stable/fixed. As @Jean-FrançoisFabre51 commented, it is the result value that’s obtained from some internal state encapsulated in the DIR object.

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solved Why some C API doesn’t follow Encapsulation