Question

void (*(*f[])())() defines f as an array of unspecified size, of pointers to functions that return pointers to functions that return void.

What does this means in a very very very simple explanation

Answer 1

Imagine you have a function – let’s call it a() – that returns void.

a() has an address in memory.

Now imagine you have a function pa() that returns a pointer to a(), i.e. pa() returns the address of a().

Now, you don’t have just one pair of functions like this but several:

• b() returns void, pb() returns the address of b()

• c() returns void, pc() returns the address of c()

and so on.

Now you want to store the addresses of pa(), pb(), pc() etc in an array, but you don’t know how many of them there are yet, so you declare an array of unspecified size to hold all those.

The type of that array, is an array of pointers to functions that return pointers to functions that return void.