> The point is that the language uses a set of the same operators with the same precedence and associativity both in declarations and in normal expressions. Us

> The point is that the language uses a set of the same operators with the same precedence and associativity both in declarations and in normal expressions. Using the same precedence and associativity in declarations and normal expressions doesn't really help the compiler writer though, so I'm not sure how this supports your point. If anything, it complicates the parser by making it harder to decide if a given sequence of tokens is a declaration or an expression (e.g. the classic "a * b;" problem). > In my view, a "user-oriented" declaration of an array of pointers would look like `pointer[10] of int`, and not `int *arr[10]`. It sounds like you're saying that C's type syntax isn't easier to read than other, similar, possible syntaxes. On that, I completely agree (in fact, I think C's type syntax is horrendous). However, that's orthogonal to the issue of Dennis Ritchie's original intent when designing C. From his writings at least, it seems like he wanted to make it easy for the programmer to reason about the syntax and I'd even argue that he took steps to complicate the compiler to accommodate his chosen syntax. I'd also argue that he failed horribly in accomplishing his intention and the syntax you're describing would have been much easier to read.