Why does C++ allow us to surround the variable name in parentheses when declaring a variable?

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Grouping.

As a particular example, consider that you can declare a variable of function type such as

int f(int);

Now, how would you declare a pointer to such a thing?

int *f(int);

Nope, doesn’t work! This is interpreted as a function returning int*. You need to add in the parentheses to make it parse the right way:

int (*f)(int);

The same deal with arrays:

int *x[5];   // array of five int*
int (*x)[5]; // pointer to array of five int

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