What is a full declarator in C?

Question

Harbison/Steele's C reference says that the end of a full declarator is a sequence point. But what is a full declarator?

"A full declarator is a declarator that is not part of another declarator"

... what?

So as an example, would it be guaranteed by the C standard that int i = 0, *j = &i stores the memory address with the value of the variable i in the pointer j?

In other words, is the int i = 0 part a full declarator?

Answer 1

No, you are mixing declarations and declarators.

Let me quote pieces of the C grammar from the standard:

declaration:
    declaration-specifiers init-declarator-list[opt] ;

init-declarator-list:
    init-declarator-list , init-declarator

init-declarator:
    declarator
    declarator = initializer

And then:

declarator:
    pointer[opt] direct-declarator

direct-declarator:
    identifier
    ( declarator )
    ....

TL;DR: int i = 0; is a declaration. The i part is a declarator.

The part about full declarators is clear if you have, for example, pointers. This line:

int *p[3] = { 0 };

is a declaration. The part *p[3] is the full declarator, but p[3] and p are also (non-full) declarators.

And asking your first question, yes, int i = 0, *j = &i; is perfectly fine, because there are two full declarators: i and *j. There is a sequence point at the end of each full declarator plus another sequence point at the end of each initializer. You could even write void *p = &p; and it would be just fine.