That's an old-school C function declaration. Note that the function return type are parameter types are implicitly int. nE is then explicitly declared to be a char pointer pointer.
But the char is outside of the declaration and before the opening brace - is this legal? And especially, why isn't it written like main(BX,charnE)? Doesn't save any bytes,it rather adds one semicolon...
I think the reason for doing it this way rather than putting the type declaration alongside the parameter is then it would also demand also adding an int declaration for the BX parameter which would then cause the code to be longer. That is to say with:
main(BX,char**nE){
.. it would throw an expected identifier error on the char. So you'd be putting the original:
main(BX,nE)n**nE;{
Against this error-free alternative:
main(int BX,n**nE){
.. but that's one byte longer.
If I got any of this wrong, I hope someone will correct me though :)
K&R predates the specs, actually. C89 codified the current C parameter convention. Compilers typically continue to support K&R style for very old C code and because it doesn't break modern C support.
Because it's not entirely about size, it's an obfuscation contest. Anything strange or unusual, especially something most people haven't seen used, will help obfuscate the code.
