ISO C

Compilers

• Intel's C/C++ Compiler (icc) is free for non-commercial development
• AMD's Open64 Compiler Suite is just plain free

gcc

• I'd like to further along gcc C99 support

Concurrency

• Hans Boehm's Threads and Memory Model for C++ page is awesome

Atomics

Introduced in C11, and exposed by stdatomic.h. Use _Atomic as a type specifier (ala volatile or const).

• Unlike other type specifiers, an atomic form of a base type might have different size/alignment than the base type.
• structs and unions may be declared atomic, but it is then undefined behavior to access any of their members.
• Implementations are "encouraged to ensure that representation of C and C++ atomic types is the same."

Asserts

• _Static_assert() is evaluated at compile time, huzzah!

Generic dispatch

The new _Genetic keyword allows mapping the type of an expression to a set of expressions. This is mainly usable for type-based dispatch of the kind seen in tgmath.h. You can't, so far as I can tell, use it for true parametric polymorphism. Tony Finch demonstrates a clever use for parametric constness:

   #define strchr(s,c) _Generic((s),                    \
       const char * : (const char *)(strchr)((s), (c)), \
       char *       :               (strchr)((s), (c)))

Types

Aliasing

• See Compiler Design page
• -O2 implies -fstrict-aliasing, at least as of gcc 4.3
• -Wstrict-aliasing=2 warns about many constructions unsafe to use with -fstrict-aliasing
  • How to use Berkeley sockets API? See http://archives.free.net.ph/message/20080529.200047.b40321b6.fi.html, etc

stdint.h

An excellent addition in C99. Type constructions of the form u?int{variety}_t (u prefix denotes unsigned). Varieties include:

• ptr: Size sufficient to hold a pointer. This is useful for function type definitions, when it's unsure whether a pointer or integer type would be most appropriate for various instances (a void *'s size is not directly related to an int's size by the ANSI C standard).
• max: Size sufficient to hold any other integer type.
• fast{8,16,32,64}: Fastest integer type having at least the specified width.
• least{8,16,32,64}: Minimum native integer type having at least the specified width.
• {8,16,32,64}: Integer type having precisely this width.

inttypes.h

ugly printf specifiers for the types in stdint.h. e.g.:

• printf("%"PRIu64"\n", some_uint64_tvar);

_Generic

C11 introduced the new keyword _Generic, allowing one of several type-tagged expressions to be chosen based on the type of a controlling expression.

static in array parameters

Beginning with C99, static can be inserted into array parameters ala:

void foo(int bararr[static 10]);

This indicates to the compiler that the array passed as bararr must have room for at least 10 elements. This ought help it produce diagnostics, and perhaps help code generation.