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When does compilation give such type of errors: "error: expected ')' before '*' token"?

+4 votes
730 views

What may be the possible reason behind it ?

posted Oct 7, 2014 by Harshita

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2 Answers

+2 votes

Compiler generates this error only & only if it does not recognize the datatype that you have mentioned in the arguments to your function I assume.

For example -->
int example(int *x,int *y) is correct.

int example(integer *x, int *y) will generate the above error because the compiler does not recognize the datatype of argument 1, i.e. integer.

If you are using some sort of typedef, just verify if you have included the respective header file in which the datatype/structure is defined. That should fix this error.

answer Oct 7, 2014 by Ankush Surelia
Thanks Ankush for clarification.
Welcome Harshita :-)
+1 vote

I have faced same type of error few days back while compiling my code using gcc compiler.
As per my observation, it comes when you use a data structure and that is not defined within the code base.
I am not sure, there may be other couple of reasons that through such type of errors.

answer Oct 7, 2014 by Ganesh
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+3 votes

I am newbie to C and getting the compilation error in the following function.

int get_names(int students, char names[students][20])
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Error:

return char names[students];
error: expected expression before 'char'
+2 votes

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+2 votes

I have very high and limited knowledge of compiler's functionality.
As per my knowledge, Compiler does it's job using following steps:
1. Lexical analysis
2. Syntactic analysis
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+3 votes

Is there any way to get the original source code from binary ?

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