why is an array of utmp structs defined as char in this example?

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I'm working through some example code from Understanding Unix/Linux Programming (Bruce Molay). There is an array declared to hold utmp structs:

#define NRECS   16
#define NULLUT  ((struct utmp *)NULL)
#define UTSIZE  (sizeof(struct utmp))

static  char    utmpbuf[NRECS * UTSIZE];

Why would the array be declared as char and not declared as struct utmp as shown below?

static  struct utmp    utmpbuf[NRECS];

The actual book source is here:

asked 14 secs ago

Chris Snow

2,739

why is an array of utmp structs defined as char in this example?