Thank you for the concise write up, but I think lowly of the [] syntax as well.

And unary operators on an identifier are a different thing, though I similarly don’t think adding one at the left, another at the right is a good thing. But I have trouble with the declaration site as well.

It’s getting out of reach of my knowledge, but I believe C’s grammar being hacky is in part due to that as well.

I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for but here is some more on it: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/l/c/roskind.html