Peter said:
That is true of C99, but rejection under #error is not a requirement of
C90
implementations. However, the C90 implementation the OP is using will.
If C99 were a human child she would be almost eight years
old and partway through the second grade. She would know how
to add and subtract, and would be on the verge of learning
multiplication. She would be able to read. She might be
taking violin lessons (with wide strings, no doubt). She would
be computer-literate. She would be an accepted, albeit junior,
member of society.
Alas! that over this bright beginning should hang the grim
shadow of noxious doom! For though she seems healthy and happy
today, her family is congenitally short-lived: her elder brother
ANSI succumbed before he reached his teens, and a similar fate
awaits poor C99. Another year or two, say the grave and sorrowful
doctors, or three at the most, and >sob< she will be gone.
When the grim day arrives, will it be said that she was never
a "real" child? Will she go to her grave unmourned, unloved,
always passed over in favor of her long-gone brother's ghost?
Don't be so heartless: it is in your power to give her a brief
moment of acknowledgment before she's gone. Make a child happy.
"Be not the first by whom the new is tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."
-- Alexander Pope