Re: AIX with Visual Age C compiler fails to compile 2.1 and later

[Paul Eggert]

Akim Demaille <address@hidden> writes:

>  > but on the other hand we need to be cognizant of the wide variety
>  > of C++ compilers in practical use today, not all of which strictly
>  > conform to the latest standard.
>
> 10 years old!?!  Then I'd like to know how old was that compiler.

But the latest C++ standard is C++03, which is only two years old.

There were a lot of changes in C++03.  An unofficial list of changes
contains over 300 pages (see
<http://www.acceleratedcpp.com/authors/koenig/c++std/revisions.pdf>)
and I wouldn't be surprised if many currently-used implementations
still fail to conform.  As far as I can tell the GCC 4.0.2 manual
doesn't even address this issue, which leads me to suspect that the
latest version of GCC doesn't conform to the latest C++ standard.

If you code to the intersection of C++98 and C++03 I guess you have a
stronger argument (though C++98 is only seven years old, not ten....).

I think we're pretty much in agreement, though.  Write to the
standard, and don't worry about nonstandard compilers unless it turns
into a real problem in practice.  And warnings from buggy compilers
don't count as real problems.