This is a more amusing than functional debate I enter into from time to time. On a line where you declare a pointer type in C++, where should the * go?
- Next to the type (i.e. Type* p1;)
- Next to the variable name (i.e. Type *p1;)
- Who cares
For the moment lets ignore #3 (after all they don’t care). I’m a firm believer in #1. After all * is a part of the type of the variable, not the name and therefore should be closer to the type.
#2 believers disagree with this notion. They believe the * is a part of the individual variable’s type and not the actual type. This is technically correct and can be demonstrated with the following code
Type* p1, p2;
The type of p2 is of course Type and not Type*. Therefore they argue, #2 is the superior way
This is true but I’m also a firm believer in don’t declare multiple variables in a single declaration statement while coding in C++ unless the type has a user defined constructor. Namely to avoid situations just like this.