> Surely it would still mirror use if the operators were applied to the type, rather than the identifier? The "type" is actually a list of storage class specif

> Surely it would still mirror use if the operators were applied to the type, rather than the identifier? The "type" is actually a list of storage class specifiers (static, extern, auto, register, typedef, _Thread_local), type qualifiers (const, volatile, restrict) and type specifiers (int, char, float, double, signed, unsigned, long, short, void). Imagine the soup of keywords that would have to be at the deepest level of the expression: static const volatile unsigned char *arr[X]; // vs *static const volatile unsigned char[X] arr;