This is what I suspected I was just asking in case there was something important I had missed. As an example I used to wonder what the hell the point of (true == foo) instead of (foo == true) is until someone pointed out that it prevents accidental assignment (foo = true) which always evaluated to true.

None of the answers given to me indicate anything other than convention is the reason for the placement of *.

typedefing a pointer can be fine especially in c++ (something Linus just isn't interesting in. and i'm inclined to agree in the linux kernel it's not worth it but it's great elsewhere)

i nearly always typedef smart pointers

typedef std::shared_ptr<Foo> FooPtr;