cdecl - C Declarations Translator

cdecl translates C declarations to plain English.

Throughout the history of the C language, this program has been written many times in different versions with varying levels of complexity and features. This one in particular uses an algorithm developed by Peter van der Linden, presented in his book Expert C Programming^[1]. Writing the program is given as an exercise in his book.

Installing

On macOS with Homebrew

$ brew install tessarin/core/cdecl

Manual Installation

Run make to compile the program and generate the manual page. Then, move the files to your desired and appropriate locations on your system:

$ make
$ mv cdecl ~/bin
$ mv cdecl.1 ~/man/man1

Usage

Call cdecl passing the declaration or write it directly in your terminal. The program will process the declaration and exit at the end of the first line.

$ cdecl

For more information including the types and features recognized by the program check the manual.

Examples

$ cdecl
long * const c
c is readonly pointer to long

$ cdecl
int *(*fn())()
fn is function returning pointer to function returning pointer to int

$ cdecl
short *(*(* const x)[3])()
x is readonly pointer to array with size 3 of pointer to function returning pointer to short

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^[1] Expert C Programming - Deep C Secrets, 1st edition
  Peter van der Linden
  © 1994 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
  ISBN 978-0-131-77429-2