function declarator strangeness

[D. Richard Hipp]

To: tuna at athena.mit.edu
Subject: Re: function declarator strangeness
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
In-Reply-To: <1990May30.173922.11825 at athena.mit.edu>
Organization: Duke University CS Dept.; Durham, NC
Cc: 
Bcc: 

In article <1990May30.173922.11825 at athena.mit.edu> you write:
>the following bits of grammar are culled from appendix A of K&R (1st ed.):
>    function-declarator:                          /* page 204 */
>        declarator ( parameter-list_opt )
>    declarator:                                   /* page 194 */
>        identifier
>        ( declarator )
>        * declarator
>        declarator ( )
>so a function "foo" returning a pointer to a function returning an int
>would be declared as:
>    int (*foo())()
>imagine that i'd like "foo" to take one argument, arg, an integer.
>given the bits of grammar shown above, i would expect use:
>    int (*foo())(arg)
>unfortunately, both pcc and gcc choke upon such a declaration. but if
>i rearrange things as
>    int (*foo(arg))()
>both compilers generate code which seems to do the right thing,
>despite the fact that this declaration of "foo" doesn't seem to match
>the grammar shown in my copy of K&R (1st ed.).

This appears to be a mistake in K&R.  My intuition (based on the
inside-out rule) told me that PCC and GCC had it right.  I went home
and checked my (Nov '85 draft of the) ANSI-C standard and it agrees
as well.  The correct declaration is
            int (*foo(x))(){ ... }
The declaration
            int (*foo())(x){ ... }
is wrong.

The inside-out rule is this:  To find the English description of the
type of an object, start with the objects name, and work toward
the outside.  Example: the incorrect declaration reads:
"foo is function returning pointer to function with argument x returning
integer".  Such is not what you want.  Applying the same inside-out
rule to the first declaration yields: "foo is function with argument x
returning pointer to function returning integer."  That sounds better...

Here is the unraveling again, but broken into a table to better show
what is happening:

        ENGLISH                                        C
       ------------------------------------     -------------------
        foo is                                         foo
        function with argument x returning             foo(x)
        pointer to                                    *foo(x)
        function returning                           (*foo(x))()
        integer                                  int (*foo(x))()