Question

when I declare C++ variables, I do it like this:

int a,b,c,d;

or

string strA,strB,strC,strD;

I.e., first the type then a comma separated list of variable names.

However, I declare pointers like this:

int *a,*b,*c,*d;

and references like this:

int &a,&b,&c,&d;

To be consistent it should be

int* a,b,c,d;

and

int& a,b,c,d;

Why is it not consistent?

Answer 1

It’s because of the C heritage. The * modifier applies to the variable in C. So the C++ designers made & to apply to the variable as well by analogy, since they couldn’t change the first without breaking C compatibility. Same is true for the array syntax too:

int anInt, *aPointerToInt, anArrayOfInt[100];

In The Design and Evolution of C++ Bjarne Stroustrup says he wasn’t happy with this but had to accept it for C compatibility. He was unhappy with this in particular:

int *a[10];

It’s not clear from the declaration if a is a pointer to an array or an array of pointers (it’s an array of pointers, you need brackets to override).

Of course, you can always use a typedef to clean things up a little.