I figured I'd add my $0.02:
As an acquaintance of mine which is in charge of a team who writes development tools including compilers likes to express in various ways, identifiers in c only last the first few fractions of a second when compiling c code. It doesn't matter to the compiler whether an identifier (and especially the name of a typedef) is a single character long or hundreds of characters long. The sole reason for using an identifier is to put a name on something. And, as many many programmers are likely to tell you (and especially once you start learning about topics such as clean code and code smells), it is best for an identifier to be spelled out, not subject to interpretation, and doesn't necessarily need to be short. The only space you're saving is on the disk of the developer (or anyone else who deals with the source code), and that is cheap and plentiful.
In addition, I personally find typedefs which just reiterate the type to be useless. If you're going to go to the bother of defining a type, define a type, not just an alias for a existing type.
Something like "typedef const char *" ccp is horrinbly wrong on so many levels. Better would be something like "typedef cost char * constCharPtr" but even that is just regurgitating what you already are saying. Far better is to describe the use something which describes the data itself, i.e. "typedef const char * constNullTerminatedStringPtr" if that's what it is used for. If it's pointing to a different type of data, use an appropriate type name for that.
That way when someone encounters something like
constNullTerminatedStringPtr yourVariableName
It's obvious your intent.
To head off some nit-picking about my suggestions above: I want to be clear about my intent here: I'm trying to point out the advantages of well thought out typedef (and other identifier) names, not state that the above are necessarily well thought out. They might not be. In particular, I'm not sure whether I'd include Ptr in the name or not. I've also known myself to add 'Type' at the end of the identifiers for typedefs which some people like and some hate. Once could also argue about where to place 'const', etc. But, those discussions are secondary to the key point here: use identifiers which are clear in their intent and are easy to read, and don't just regurgitates the underling C code.
I'd highly recommend reading about refactoring and code smells and the like. Also the video series by Robert C. Martin is excellent if you have access to them for free through some method (such as safari books online).
