c - Difference between -> and . in a struct?

Question

If I have a struct like

struct account {
   int account_number;
};

Then what's the difference between doing

myAccount.account_number;

and

myAccount->account_number;

or isn't there a difference?

If there's no difference, why wouldn't you just use the . notation rather than ->? -> seems so messy.

Answer 1

-> is a shorthand for (*x).field, where x is a pointer to a variable of type struct account, and field is a field in the struct, such as account_number.

If you have a pointer to a struct, then saying

accountp->account_number;

is much more concise than

(*accountp).account_number;