Re: Why is gcc going to default to "GNU dialect of ISO C99?"

[Andrew Haley <aph@redhat.com>]

On 02/10/2010 04:44 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> According to
> 
> http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/C-Dialect-Options.html#C-Dialect-Options
> 
> -std=foobar
> 
> 
> `gnu9x'
>     GNU dialect of ISO C99. When ISO C99 is fully implemented in GCC,
> this will become the default. The name `gnu9x' is deprecated.
> 
> I really can not understand the logic of this. Why not default to ISO
> C99 and let people enable GNUisms if they wish to? Then code should be
> more portable across different compilers. With the GNUisms allowed by
> default, it will make porting code more difficult to other stricter
> compilers.

This reasoning would make perfect sense if the primary goal of gcc's
users was to write code to be ported to other compilers.  However,
many of GNU C's extensions are very useful, so it makes sense to have
them available by default.  (Having said that, many of GNU C's
extensions are part of C99 anyway, so the difference is smaller than
with C89.)

Andrew.