7.6 DECLARING MULTIPLE NAMES

It is possible to declare several names in a single declaration. The declaration simply contains a list of comma-separated declarators:

       int x, y, v[10]; in C++ or Java

is equivalent to

       int x;       int y;       int v[10];

Similarly,

       float[] x, y; in Java

is equivalent to

       float[] x;       float[] y;

Declaring several names in a single statement can sometimes lead to unreadable code. For example, you could say in C++

       int* p, y;

If you have become accustomed to thinking of int* as a type specifier, you'd think that the above declaration is equivalent to

        int* p;        int* y;

But that is wrong, because, syntactically speaking, the symbol * is a unary operator that is right associative. Therefore, when the compiler sees

        int* p, y;

it actually reads

       int* p, y;

which is how you'd write it in a C program anyway. But to quickly assimilate a program visually it is better to write a pointer declaration as "int* p;" as opposed to "int *p;," even though the two are completely equivalent. Thinking of int* as a pointer type, you immediately see p as a pointer to an integer variable. In any case, regardless of your preferences, in C++ it has now become common to declare a pointer in the fashion exemplified by "int* p;."