### Declarators

A declarator designates a data object or function. Declarators appear in all data definitions and declarations and in some type definitions .

In a declarator, you can specify the type of an object to be an array, a pointer, or a reference. You can specify that the return type of a function is a pointer or a reference. You can also perform initialization in a declarator.

IBM C and C++ Compilers also implements the following qualifiers:

- _Packed
- __unaligned
- _Seg16
- _Export
- _Inline

In C, you cannot declare or define a volatile or const function. C++ class member functions can be qualified with const or volatile .

A simple declarator consists of an identifier, which names a data object. For example, the following block scope data declaration uses initial as the declarator:

    auto char initial;

The data object initial has the storage class auto and the data type char .

You can define or declare a structure, union, or array. by using a declarator that contains an identifier, which names the data object, and some combination of symbols and identifiers, which describes the type of data that the object represents.

The following declaration uses compute[5] as the declarator:

    extern long int compute[5];

Unions

Packed Qualifier
Arrays
Enumerations
Pointers
Syntax of a Declarator
Type of Conditional C++ Expressions