Why does C's BNF grammar allow declarations with an empty sequence of init-declarators?

Question

When looking through C's BNF grammar, I thought it was weird that the production rule for a declaration looked like this (according to https://cs.wmich.edu/~gupta/teaching/cs4850/sumII06/The%20syntax%20of%20C%20in%20Backus-Naur%20form.htm):

<declaration> ::=  {<declaration-specifier>}+ {<init-declarator>}* ; 

Why use an * quantifier (meaning zero or more occurrences) for the init-declarator? This allows statements such as int; or void; to be syntactically valid, even though they're semantically invalid. Couldn't they have just used a + quantifier (one or more occurrences) instead of * in the production rule?

I tried compiling a simple program to see what the compiler outputs and all it does is issue a warning.

Input:

int main(void) {     int; } 

Output:

test.c: In function ‘main’: test.c:2:5: warning: useless type name in empty declaration      int;      ^~~ 

Answer 1

declaration-specifier includes type-specifier, which includes enum-specifier. A construct like

enum stuff {x, y}; 

is a valid declaration with no init-declarator.

Constructs like int; are ruled out by constraints beyond the grammar:

A declaration other than a static_assert declaration shall declare at least a declarator (other than the parameters of a function or the members of a structure or union), a tag, or the members of an enumeration.

I would guess that there are backward compatibility reasons behind your compiler only issuing a warning.

Answer 2

A declaration without an init declarator:

<declaration> ::=  {<declaration-specifier>}+ {<init-declarator>}* ; 

is harmless for declaration specifier lists that aren't a single enum/struct/union specifier and it usefully matches those that are.

In any case, the presented grammar will also erroneously match declarations like int struct foo x; or double _Bool y; (it allows multiple specifiers in order to match things like long long int), but all these can be detected later, in a semantic check.

The BNF grammar itself won't weed out all illegal constructs.