Is it just me or just Microsoft?

[Richard Heathfield]

user923005 said:

I would be interested to know if a fully validated C99 compiler exists
(one that correctly implements each and every language feature).

http://www.peren.com/pages/cvsa_isocvpl.htm may be of interest to you. I
don't know how thorough their test suite is, of course.

 

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

I have never seen a compiler that actually conforms the the ISO C99
standard, though many of them implement subsets of it.

The microsoft compiler implements close to zero of C99.

The GNU compiler implements a very large part of C99 and is available
for a bunch of operating systems and CPUs.

Erik

 

[user923005]

The microsoft compiler implements close to zero of C99.

The GNU compiler implements a very large part of C99 and is available
for a bunch of operating systems and CPUs.

I have both of these compilers and use them on a daily basis.
A compiler that offers "most of C99" is not more useful than one that
does not.
If we cannot count on full functionality, it makes no sense to program
to that standard since we do not know if some piece it is going to
work or not.
In addition, unless all compilers we use have features supported
across all platforms we must be very careful about how we use it.

I have to compile code for:
MVS
OS/390
OS/400
z/OS
OpenVMS VAX/ALPHA/ITANIUM
HP/Ux
Windows
Linux
Solaris
SunOS
Aix
BSD variants
SCO
Ultrix
along with both 32 & 64 bit variants for {mostly} all of these...
and lots of others I can't think of right now.

If I have a source code base that needs to be compiled on all of these
systems, I cannot simply hope that some part of the language will be
implemented.

We use GCC on about 2/3 of the platforms and commercial compilers on
the other 1/3 (usually because GCC is not available, but occasionally
because the commercial compilers generate much better code).