How do you decipher complex declarations of pointers+arrays?

Question

Although I use std::vector almost all the time, I am interested in understanding as much as I can about pointers. Examples of what I am talking about:

Answer 1

I learned the clockwise/spiral rule long ago from some magazine article. Here's an online article that describes the technique:

• http://c-faq.com/decl/spiral.anderson.html

It's served me well, though I still struggle mightily with some of the monstrous template-based declarations I come across at times.