Re:Modern Pascal is still in the race (2022)
by mananaysiempre on Wednesday October 11, 2023 @08:41PM
(#37852182)
For the same reason you don’t write x+y * z: because then the spacing contradicts the way the priorities work in the language.
We might wish for the C declaration syntax to be <type> <name>[, ...], but it’s not: it’s <specifier>[ ...] <declarator>[, ...], where int, long, unsigned, struct stat, union { uint64_t u; double d; }, and even typedef are all specifiers, and foo, (foo), (((foo))), *bar, baz[10], (*spam)(int), and even (*eggs)[STRIDE] are all declarators (the wisdom of using the last one is debatable, but it is genuinely useful if you can count on the future maintainer to know what it means).
Everybody is free to not like the syntax, but actively misleading the reader about its workings seems counterproductive.
We might wish for the C declaration syntax to be <type> <name>[, ...], but it’s not: it’s <specifier>[ ...] <declarator>[, ...], where int, long, unsigned, struct stat, union { uint64_t u; double d; }, and even typedef are all specifiers, and foo, (foo), (((foo))), *bar, baz[10], (*spam)(int), and even (*eggs)[STRIDE] are all declarators (the wisdom of using the last one is debatable, but it is genuinely useful if you can count on the future maintainer to know what it means).
Everybody is free to not like the syntax, but actively misleading the reader about its workings seems counterproductive.