9 Declarations [dcl.dcl]

9.3 Declarators [dcl.decl]

9.3.4 Meaning of declarators [dcl.meaning]

9.3.4.1 General [dcl.meaning.general]

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A declarator contains exactly one declarator-id; it names the identifier that is declared.
An unqualified-id occurring in a declarator-id shall be a simple identifier except for the declaration of some special functions ([class.ctor], [class.conv], [class.dtor], [over.oper]) and for the declaration of template specializations or partial specializations ([temp.spec]).
When the declarator-id is qualified, the declaration shall refer to a previously declared member of the class or namespace to which the qualifier refers (or, in the case of a namespace, of an element of the inline namespace set of that namespace ([namespace.def])) or to a specialization thereof; the member shall not merely have been introduced by a using-declaration in the scope of the class or namespace nominated by the nested-name-specifier of the declarator-id.
The nested-name-specifier of a qualified declarator-id shall not begin with a decltype-specifier.
[Note 1:
If the qualifier is the global ​::​ scope resolution operator, the declarator-id refers to a name declared in the global namespace scope.
— end note]
The optional attribute-specifier-seq following a declarator-id appertains to the entity that is declared.
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A static, thread_­local, extern, mutable, friend, inline, virtual, constexpr, or typedef specifier or an explicit-specifier applies directly to each declarator-id in an init-declarator-list or member-declarator-list; the type specified for each declarator-id depends on both the decl-specifier-seq and its declarator.
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Thus, a declaration of a particular identifier has the form T D where T is of the form attribute-specifier-seq decl-specifier-seq and D is a declarator.
Following is a recursive procedure for determining the type specified for the contained declarator-id by such a declaration.
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First, the decl-specifier-seq determines a type.
In a declaration T D the decl-specifier-seq T determines the type T.
[Example 1:
In the declaration int unsigned i; the type specifiers int unsigned determine the type “unsigned int” ([dcl.type.simple]).
— end example]
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In a declaration attribute-specifier-seq T D where D is an unadorned identifier the type of this identifier is “T”.
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In a declaration T D where D has the form
( D1 )
the type of the contained declarator-id is the same as that of the contained declarator-id in the declaration T D1
Parentheses do not alter the type of the embedded declarator-id, but they can alter the binding of complex declarators.