2. Language Standards Supported by GCC

For each language compiled by GCC for which there is a standard, GCC attempts to follow one or more versions of that standard, possibly with some exceptions, and possibly with some extensions.

GCC supports three versions of the C standard, although support for the most recent version is not yet complete.

The original ANSI C standard (X3.159-1989) was ratified in 1989 and published in 1990. This standard was ratified as an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990) later in 1990. There were no technical differences between these publications, although the sections of the ANSI standard were renumbered and became clauses in the ISO standard. This standard, in both its forms, is commonly known as C89, or occasionally as C90, from the dates of ratification. The ANSI standard, but not the ISO standard, also came with a Rationale document. To select this standard in GCC, use one of the options `-ansi', `-std=c89' or `-std=iso9899:1990'; to obtain all the diagnostics required by the standard, you should also specify `-pedantic' (or `-pedantic-errors' if you want them to be errors rather than warnings). See section Options Controlling C Dialect.

Errors in the 1990 ISO C standard were corrected in two Technical Corrigenda published in 1994 and 1996. GCC does not support the uncorrected version.

An amendment to the 1990 standard was published in 1995. This amendment added digraphs and __STDC_VERSION__ to the language, but otherwise concerned the library. This amendment is commonly known as AMD1; the amended standard is sometimes known as C94 or C95. To select this standard in GCC, use the option `-std=iso9899:199409' (with, as for other standard versions, `-pedantic' to receive all required diagnostics).

A new edition of the ISO C standard was published in 1999 as ISO/IEC 9899:1999, and is commonly known as C99. GCC has incomplete support for this standard version; see http://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-3.0/c99status.html for details. To select this standard, use `-std=c99' or `-std=iso9899:1999'. (While in development, drafts of this standard version were referred to as C9X.)

GCC also has some limited support for traditional (pre-ISO) C with the `-traditional' option. This support may be of use for compiling some very old programs that have not been updated to ISO C, but should not be used for new programs. It will not work with some modern C libraries such as the GNU C library.

By default, GCC provides some extensions to the C language that on rare occasions conflict with the C standard. See section Extensions to the C Language Family. Use of the `-std' options listed above will disable these extensions where they conflict with the C standard version selected. You may also select an extended version of the C language explicitly with `-std=gnu89' (for C89 with GNU extensions) or `-std=gnu99' (for C99 with GNU extensions). The default, if no C language dialect options are given, is `-std=gnu89'; this will change to `-std=gnu99' in some future release when the C99 support is complete. Some features that are part of the C99 standard are accepted as extensions in C89 mode.

The ISO C standard defines (in clause 4) two classes of conforming implementation. A conforming hosted implementation supports the whole standard including all the library facilities; a conforming freestanding implementation is only required to provide certain library facilities: those in <float.h>, <limits.h>, <stdarg.h>, and <stddef.h>; since AMD1, also those in <iso646.h>; and in C99, also those in <stdbool.h> and <stdint.h>. In addition, complex types, added in C99, are not required for freestanding implementations. The standard also defines two environments for programs, a freestanding environment, required of all implementations and which may not have library facilities beyond those required of freestanding implementations, where the handling of program startup and termination are implementation-defined, and a hosted environment, which is not required, in which all the library facilities are provided and startup is through a function int main (void) or int main (int, char *[]). An OS kernel would be a freestanding environment; a program using the facilities of an operating system would normally be in a hosted implementation.

GCC aims towards being usable as a conforming freestanding implementation, or as the compiler for a conforming hosted implementation. By default, it will act as the compiler for a hosted implementation, defining __STDC_HOSTED__ as 1 and presuming that when the names of ISO C functions are used, they have the semantics defined in the standard. To make it act as a conforming freestanding implementation for a freestanding environment, use the option `-ffreestanding'; it will then define __STDC_HOSTED__ to 0 and not make assumptions about the meanings of function names from the standard library. To build an OS kernel, you may well still need to make your own arrangements for linking and startup. See section Options Controlling C Dialect.

GCC does not provide the library facilities required only of hosted implementations, nor yet all the facilities required by C99 of freestanding implementations; to use the facilities of a hosted environment, you will need to find them elsewhere (for example, in the GNU C library). See section Standard Libraries.

For references to Technical Corrigenda, Rationale documents and information concerning the history of C that is available online, see http://gcc.gnu.org/readings.html

There is no formal written standard for Objective-C. The most authoritative manual is "Object-Oriented Programming and the Objective-C Language", available at a number of web sites; http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/macosx/Cocoa/ObjectiveC/ has a recent version, while http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers/objc/ is an older example. http://www.gnustep.org includes useful information as well.

See section `The GNU Fortran Language' in Using and Porting GNU Fortran, for details of the Fortran language supported by GCC.

See section `Compatibility with the Java Platform' in GNU gcj, for details of compatibility between gcj and the Java Platform.