Function declaration

[Timon Gehr]

On 12/25/2013 04:57 PM, "Casper Færgemand" <shorttail at hotmail.com>" wrote:
>  From http://dlang.org/declaration.html#Parameter
>
> Parameter:
>      InOutopt BasicType Declarator
>      InOutopt BasicType Declarator ...
>      InOutopt BasicType Declarator = DefaultInitializerExpression
>      InOutopt Type
>      InOutopt Type ...
>
> How do I add a declarator to a parameter like "char * format"? I altered
> the language specification to add a "InOutopt Type Declarator", but is
> there another way? The specification overall is really good, but I've
> found a few missing things elsewhere, and I'm wondering if it really is
> missing or I'm missing the point. :P I can't see any way to add a
> parameter name to something of type Type.

The following is a parse tree for char* format:

           Parameter
          /    |    \
         /     |     \
        /      |      \
       /   BasicType   \
  InOut_opt    |        \
           BasicTypeX   Declarator
               |       /   |      \
             'char'   / Identifier \
                     /     |       DeclaratorSuffixes_opt
                    /   'format'
                   /
            BasicType2Opt
                 /
           BasicType2
               /
             '*'

I consider the grammar specification (as well as some details of what is 
valid syntax) to be quite inelegant, unnecessarily repetitive and 
inconvenient for parser generators, but I am not sure if a clean-up 
would be welcome.