Comment by braindeath | Hacker News Reader

Comment by braindeath | Hacker News Reader

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I think you're inadvertently just proving the point.

I was speaking of declarators, not declaration specifiers. In C, a pointer type is part of the declarator and not the specifiers. Therefore, the CV qualifier is also part of the declarator except for the one exception of the specifier. Regardless of whether specifiers were intended to follow English (and this claim is dubious), declarators certainly were not, since it's often more natural to read them right to left, and it's generally most natural to read the left most type-specifier last.

example: char *x[10]; Translated to english this is naturally stated as an array of 10 pointers to char. Not char something something array.

Edit: later on I see you've moved the goal posts about the "uselessness" of cv qualifiers on pointers. I don't know what to tell you, I think that's bullshit, and there are a number of viable use-cases for them regardless of whether you have encountered them. I'm just addressing the consistency part here.

Indeed, declarators must have their postfix chain read first, left to right, then the prefix portions right to left. (Separately at each level of parenthesization, if any, working inside out.)

There is no choice about where to put const inside a declarator; the position affects the nesting level which alters the semantics. So there is no debate to be had there.

Note that in declarators, the const is necessarily to the left of the thing it qualifies, so why would we put it to the right of int:

   int ** const ptr;
                ^^^ this is what is const

   int * const *ptr;
               ^^^^ this is what is const

   const int **ptr;
         ^^^ ^^^^^ these two are const

In the canonical specifier order, nothing to the left of const is tainted by const:

   extern const int **ptr;
                ^^^ ^^^^^^  const and const
   ^^^^^^ unrelated to const

For the best possible consistency, imagine const to be pissing, while the wind is blowing left to right.

Wait what??

Your third example could just as easily and correctly be:

  int const **ptr;
            ^^^^^ this is what is const

True, it is a special case when there is more than one item in the declarator list as to how const applied, but that by itself is secondary to where const goes.

Const qualifies the object. Whether the const is applying to the "int" in some way or is an independent type specifier that applies to each declarator is pretty philosophical. I say it's the latter. The fact is, the very allowance of a cv qualifier in the specifier list introduces an inconsistency or imbalance.

Ultimately this is one of the ultimate bikeshedding argument. There's no right answer, and appeals to spoken language aren't particularly compelling when bikeshedding C of all languages. This isn't AppleScript.

I'm not even terribly interested in this particular point. I'm more interested in quashing the notions that bikeshedded opinions of language syntax have some divine providence. It's just bullshit.

We're then missing that the const qualification is applying to the int type.

Also, declarations can have multiple declarators.

   int const *p, volatile **q[3];  // syntax error! not how it works

This isn't bike-shedding. The shed has already been painted. There is a right answer which is not to make your code look weird just because the standard allows it.

No "int const", no i[array] instead of array[i], no deceptive trompe d'oeil nonsense like:

   int* p, q;

You will not solve any issue in C programming by swapping around declarators.

When we write code, stuff that looks weird should signal a bug. When bug-free code looks weird, that is a distracting false positive that grabs my attention for no reason. Don't add gratuitous weird.

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