Is C11 interesting?

[Samurai_Crow]

After discussion in another thread about how VBCC has a different approach than GCC for programming, does anyone else think that having generics in the preprocessor and unpopular features of C99 made optional would make a difference for C programming?

[matthey]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

After discussion in another thread about how VBCC has a different approach than GCC for programming, does anyone else think that having generics in the preprocessor and unpopular features of C99 made optional would make a difference for C programming?

I don't expect C11 to make much of a difference other than for multi-threading and security related programming (both common and important though). The preprocessor generic stuff is not the easiest to use, read or understand so I don't expect it to be commonly used (useful but niche). There were some other little niceties added but they are mostly not common. I would like to see vbcc support C11 partially (the best and easiest to implement parts) with a -c11 switch like alignment features, anonymous structures and unions, new more secure string functions, _Noreturn/quick_exit(), set optional features to detect as not available, etc. but it is low priority. Making the C11 features optional now doesn't save much because most compilers support C99 with the same executable/libraries/includes which already bloats everything if fully supported. It helps to make as much modular as possible for a non-bloated compiler aimed at embedded systems like vbcc. However, vbcc needs to be fairly compatible to GCC/Clang or it will not be popular.