There are four possible spacings to consider: foo*bar; // multiplies foo and bar foo* bar; // declares bar as pointer-to-foo foo *bar; // declares *bar a

There are four possible spacings to consider: foo*bar; // multiplies foo and bar foo* bar; // declares bar as pointer-to-foo foo *bar; // declares *bar as foo (so bar is still a foo*) foo * bar; // multiplies foo and bar These are all unambigous and there are only two semantics between them. You also have: foo* bar,baz; // baz is a pointer foo *bar,baz; // baz is a foo foo *bar,*baz; // baz is pointer again foo* bar,*baz; // baz is now a pointer *to* a pointer This is all obvious - or at worst unambigous - to a person reading the actual code (without trying to correct for the idiosyncracies of a parser), so the language should either match that or spit out a warning about unsupported spacing. > [`int c = x*y;` is] wrong. No, that's unambigously multiplication.