Why is the C++ variable declaration syntax inconsistent?

Question

when I declare C++ variables, I do it like this:

int a,b,c,d;

or

string strA,strB,strC,strD;

I.e., first

Answer 1

The reason is: in reality & and * in C and C++ applies to variable and no to type.

So the problem is that if you want to declare 4 pointer to integers you should write

int *a, *b, *c, *d;

Writing int* a, b; means

int *a;
int b;

For this reason a lot of people prefer to write int *a; than int* a;, just code style.

Of course int* is a type, but the C syntax states clearly that in a variable declaration * and & will apply to variable.

This happens for the same reason that arrays in C are declared in this way:

int a[10], b;

std::cout << typeid(a).name() << std::endl; // it will print int[10]
std::cout << typeid(b).name() << std::endl; // it will print int

In other languages like C# instead the syntax int[] array; is used.

Another thing is the pointer to function syntax:

// Now we declare a variable that is a pointer to function
int (*pt2Function)(char, char) = NULL;

We are applying the * to the variable name.

It seems to me that the use of * and & applied to the variable, also if 90% of us would prefer differently, is more consistent with the rest of the language.

In the same way, going back to arrays:

// Now we declare a variable that is a pointer to an array of 10 integers.
int (*arrayptr)[10];