20.1 Variable Declarations

Here’s what a variable declaration looks like:

keywords basetype decorated-variable [= init];

The keywords specify how to handle the scope of the variable name and the allocation of its storage. Most declarations have no keywords because the defaults are right for them.

C allows these keywords to come before or after basetype, or even in the middle of it as in unsigned static int, but don’t do that—it would surprise other programmers. Always write the keywords first.

The basetype can be any of the predefined types of C, or a type keyword defined with typedef. It can also be struct tag, union tag, or enum tag. In addition, it can include type qualifiers such as const and volatile (see Type Qualifiers).

In the simplest case, decorated-variable is just the variable name. That declares the variable with the type specified by basetype. For instance,

int foo;

uses int as the basetype and foo as the decorated-variable. It declares foo with type int.

struct tree_node foo;

declares foo with type struct tree_node.

• Declaring Arrays and Pointers
• Combining Variable Declarations