How is precedence determined in C pointers?

Question

I've come across two pointer declarations that I'm having trouble understanding. My understanding of precedence rules goes something like this:

Operator             Precedence             Associativity
(), [ ]                  1                  Left to Right
*, identifier            2                  Right to Left
Data type                3

But even given this, I can't seem to figure out how to evaluate the following examples correctly:

First example

float * (* (*ptr)(int))(double **,char c)

My evaluation:

1. *(ptr)
2. (int)
3. *(*ptr)(int)
4. *(*(*ptr)(int))

Then,

1. double **
2. char c

Second example

unsigned **( * (*ptr) [5] ) (char const *,int *)

1. *(ptr)
2. [5]
3. *(*ptr)[5]
4. *(*(*ptr)[5])
5. **(*(*ptr)[5])

How should I read them?

Answer 1

My guess for the first one: ptr is a pointer to a function that takes as parameter an int, and returns a pointer to a function that takes as parameters a pointer to pointer to double and a char, and returns a pointer to float.

Interpretation:

(*ptr)(int)

says that ptr is a pointer to a function taking an int as an argument. To discover what that function returns we need to expand our view:

(* (*ptr)(int))

this means the function returns a pointer to another function. The parameters of that other function are:

(double **,char c)

and it returns

float *

And for the second one: ptr is a pointer to an array of five pointers to functions that take as parameters a constant pointer to char and a pointer to int, returning a pointer to a pointer of unsigned int.

Interpretation:

( * (*ptr) [5] )

declares ptr as a pointer to array of five pointers to a function taking

(char const *,int *)

as arguments and returning

unsigned **

Answer 2

You could try the 'The Clockwise Spiral' Method to understand these insane declarations:

http://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html

I blogged about it here too:

http://www.kalekold.net/index.php?post=4

Answer 3

Using cdecl.org:

char * const (* (* const bar)[5])(int )

declare bar as const pointer to array 5 of pointer to function (int) returning const pointer to char

unsigned **( * (*ptr) [5] ) ( char const *,int *)

declare ptr as pointer to array 5 of pointer to function (pointer to const char, pointer to int) returning pointer to pointer to unsigned

Answer 4

It's a function pointer. The person who wrote it could have made better use of typedefs to have made it clearer.

It is in effect a pointer to function with these parameters. float* myfunc(double**, char)