parsing - C isn't that hard: void ( *( *f[] ) () ) ()

Question

I just saw a picture today and think I'd appreciate explanations. So here is the picture:

I found this confusing and wondered if such codes are ever practical. I googled the picture and found another picture in this reddit entry, and here is that picture:

So this "reading spirally" is something valid? Is this how C compilers parse?
It'd be great if there are simpler explanations for this weird code.
Apart from all, can these kind of codes be useful? If so, where and when?

There is a question about "spiral rule", but I'm not just asking about how it's applied or how expressions are read with that rule. I'm questioning usage of such expressions and spiral rule's validity as well. Regarding these, some nice answers are already posted.

Answer 1

There is a rule called the "Clockwise/Spiral Rule" to help find the meaning of a complex declaration.

From c-faq:

There are three simple steps to follow:

1. Starting with the unknown element, move in a spiral/clockwise direction; when ecountering the following elements replace them with the corresponding english statements:

   [X] or []
   => Array X size of... or Array undefined size of...

   (type1, type2)
   => function passing type1 and type2 returning...

   *
   => pointer(s) to...

2. Keep doing this in a spiral/clockwise direction until all tokens have been covered.

3. Always resolve anything in parenthesis first!

You can check the link above for examples.

Also note that to help you there is also a website called:

http://www.cdecl.org

You can enter a C declaration and it will give its english meaning. For

void (*(*f[])())()

it outputs:

declare f as array of pointer to function returning pointer to function returning void

EDIT:

As pointed out in the comments by Random832, the spiral rule does not address array of arrays and will lead to a wrong result in (most of) those declarations. For example for int **x[1][2]; the spiral rule ignores the fact that [] has higher precedence over *.

When in front of array of arrays, one can first add explicit parentheses before applying the spiral rule. For example: int **x[1][2]; is the same as int **(x[1][2]); (also valid C) due to precedence and the spiral rule then correctly reads it as "x is an array 1 of array 2 of pointer to pointer to int" which is the correct english declaration.

Note that this issue has also been covered in this answer by James Kanze (pointed out by haccks in the comments).