i remember an online argument on a forum like 15 years ago where one set of people would say "each to their own" and the other would say "to each their own" and remarkably both sides were able to explain to the other why the syntax made sense to them. there were posts like "oh, you mean each person to their own preference!" i often think of it when there's some nomenclature thing which basically doesn't matter but both sides seem unable to see where the other is coming from

anyway, with this in mind, can someone explain something to me? in C, i tend to write this:

int* x;

i write it like that because i believe i am bringing into existence x, whose type is "a pointer to an integer". it's not an int, it's an int pointer. so i write int*, because that's what type it is. it seems clearer that way. however i often see this:

int *x;

this seems less clear, but some (most?) people obviously think THAT way is the clearer way. if you do, what's your thought process?

@jk there’s the declaring multiple case, for example, i sometimes have to do it.e. struct addrinfo ai, *next_ai; (for things like say a linked list) - so i can define my struct and a pointer for iterating through it
@cb y'know i pretty much never do multiple definitions on a line! for some reason i find it harder to read, which is funny, since i learnt pascal before C, and i (and everyone i saw) did it all the time there, since pre-declaring all your variables at the beginning of a function was kind of the pascal style
@jk predeclaring was also required pre C99 (but very goofy with K&R) so you’ll see it as old habit in a lot of places