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From: rfg@paris.ics.uci.edu (Ron Guilmette)
Newsgroups: comp.std.c
Subject: Is `char const *foo;' legal?
Message-ID: <25ABBF93.9618@paris.ics.uci.edu>
Date: 10 Jan 90 23:04:51 GMT
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Lines: 38

I have recently learned that the GNU C compiler accepts the following
declaration without complaint:

	char const *foo;

It treats such a declaration as being identical to:

	const char *foo;

Now I have looked at the draft ANSI standard, and I can find no examples
that look like `<typename> const *<variable-name>;'.

Due to the fact that the C declaration syntax is so complex, I don't
even want to try to think about the issue of whether or not such declarations
are syntactically legal.

So let me just ask the general question: "Are such declarations both
syntactically and semantically legal?"

Please excuse me if this question seems excessively naive.  It is just
that I have never before seen any declarations of this form.

One other question.  If this form of declaration *is* legal, then
does the standard contain any verbage which would clarify the type of
`bar' in the following example?

	void foo (char const bar[])
	{
	}

GCC accepts this declaration, and it binds the `const' with lower `priority'
that the `[]'.  Thus, the type of `bar' is taken as pointer to constant char.

I have found no basis in the standard for either this binding *or* for the
other alternative (i.e. binding the `const' more tightly than the `[]').
Did I miss something?  Which binding is "correct"?  Why?

// rfg