I don't know for certain, but I suspect it simplified the language's grammar, since C's "declaration follows use" rule means you can basically repurpose the exp

I don't know for certain, but I suspect it simplified the language's grammar, since C's "declaration follows use" rule means you can basically repurpose the expression grammar for declarations instead of needing new rules for types. This is also why the function pointer syntax is so baroque (`int (*x)();` declares a variable `x` containing a pointer to a function taking no parameters and returning an int).