It's a pointer to a type, not a variable with an asterisk in its name

You can also understand the asterisk as a prefix on the name to determine that int *x as X is a pointer storing a memory address of type int data or any other argument of your preference. That's the issue, that you can read and interpret it in different ways so it's a bit subjective... 😅

I understand that sometimes the notation is confusing, because different textbooks place the * differently. The three following declarations are equivalent:

 int *x; 
 int* x; 
 int * x; 

I always believed that the least confusing notation is int * x because when read from right to left you can interpret it as x is a pointer, hence allocating a memory address which references to an int value, plus you not "link" visibly the asterisk to the type nor to the var name.

There are some details into that, see:

int* x, y, z;

This is 1 pointer and 2 int variables.

int *x, y, z;

This is still 1 pointer and 2 int variables.

For the sake of clarity:

 int * x, * y, * z;

Those are effectively 3 pointers and we can understand the asterisk as a somewhat independent (keyword if you will) and use it just like that.

I haven't coded in C for around 10Y, maybe nowadays there is some linter out there that you can use to enforce one way or the other in your projects 😁

you are correct.

Ritchie intentionally designed C's declaration syntax to be "the thing on the right, if it were used in an expression, has the type of the thing on the left." So int *x means *x when used in an expression has the type int — therefore, by implication, x must be a pointer to int.

C is what it is. No amount of ranting will change it. Many before you have ranted about this same thing using the same arguments, so you're not bringing anything new to the table. If you're going to read other people's C code, you just have to get used to it. If if bothers you so much, you're free not to use C at all.

Incidentally, it's trivial to make the counter argument: the * is not part of the type (no matter how badly you might want it to be), so don't make it look like it is.