I have worked on projects where linters enforce that style, and I hate it.

You can read their justification: a programmer or code reviewer might mistakenly believe that the two variables src and c are declared as char *.

"A programmer might not know the syntax" is as stupid a justification for enforcing these rules as "a reader might not be able to read long sentences correctly" is for enforcing a stupid rule over text written in a natural language. I'm sorry that you failed to see the analogy.

They also just drop a statement like "declaring no more than one variable per declaration can make code easier to read and eliminate confusion." I can drop my opinion too: "declaring more than one variable per declaration can make code easier to read and eliminate confusion." It can also make the code shorter and easier to scan & edit.

And I think analogies involving natural language are more relevant than you think.

I would rather read "U, V, and W are phases" than "U is a phase. V is a phase. W is a phase." It's the same goddamn thing, we're declaring things (and optionally initializing them).