C++ Primer Lippman 5th exercise 2.27 b

Question

C++ Primer exercise 2.27 5th ed.
Exercise: Which of the following initializations are legal? Explain why.

(b) int *const p2 = &i2;

This is legal according to: https://github.com/Mooophy/Cpp-Primer/tree/master/ch02#exercise-227

I don't see where i2 has been declared? (I've looked at the errata also.)

Answer 1

It is exploiting the fact that the * goes with the name, not the type.

i2 is declared as an integer by the question above this one

int* ip, ip2;

not a pointer. So

 int *const p2 = &i2;

p2 is assigned the address of i2, a pointer. The const pointer of p2 does not come in to play unless you try and change the value of p2.