Next: C++ Dialect Options, Previous: Invoking G++, Up: Invoking GCC [Contents][Index]
The following options control the dialect of C (or languages derived from C, such as C++, Objective-C and Objective-C++) that the compiler accepts:
-ansi
In C mode, this is equivalent to -std=c90. In C++ mode, it is equivalent to -std=c++98.
This turns off certain features of GCC that are incompatible with ISO
C90 (when compiling C code), or of standard C++ (when compiling C++ code),
such as the asm
and typeof
keywords, and
predefined macros such as unix
and vax
that identify the
type of system you are using. It also enables the undesirable and
rarely used ISO trigraph feature. For the C compiler,
it disables recognition of C++ style ‘//’ comments as well as
the inline
keyword.
The alternate keywords __asm__
, __extension__
,
__inline__
and __typeof__
continue to work despite
-ansi. You would not want to use them in an ISO C program, of
course, but it is useful to put them in header files that might be included
in compilations done with -ansi. Alternate predefined macros
such as __unix__
and __vax__
are also available, with or
without -ansi.
The -ansi option does not cause non-ISO programs to be rejected gratuitously. For that, -Wpedantic is required in addition to -ansi. See Warning Options.
The macro __STRICT_ANSI__
is predefined when the -ansi
option is used. Some header files may notice this macro and refrain
from declaring certain functions or defining certain macros that the
ISO standard doesn’t call for; this is to avoid interfering with any
programs that might use these names for other things.
Functions that are normally built in but do not have semantics
defined by ISO C (such as alloca
and ffs
) are not built-in
functions when -ansi is used. See Other
built-in functions provided by GCC, for details of the functions
affected.
-std=
Determine the language standard. See Language Standards Supported by GCC, for details of these standard versions. This option is currently only supported when compiling C or C++.
The compiler can accept several base standards, such as ‘c90’ or
‘c++98’, and GNU dialects of those standards, such as
‘gnu90’ or ‘gnu++98’. When a base standard is specified, the
compiler accepts all programs following that standard plus those
using GNU extensions that do not contradict it. For example,
-std=c90 turns off certain features of GCC that are
incompatible with ISO C90, such as the asm
and typeof
keywords, but not other GNU extensions that do not have a meaning in
ISO C90, such as omitting the middle term of a ?:
expression. On the other hand, when a GNU dialect of a standard is
specified, all features supported by the compiler are enabled, even when
those features change the meaning of the base standard. As a result, some
strict-conforming programs may be rejected. The particular standard
is used by -Wpedantic to identify which features are GNU
extensions given that version of the standard. For example
-std=gnu90 -Wpedantic warns about C++ style ‘//’
comments, while -std=gnu99 -Wpedantic does not.
A value for this option must be provided; possible values are
Support all ISO C90 programs (certain GNU extensions that conflict with ISO C90 are disabled). Same as -ansi for C code.
ISO C90 as modified in amendment 1.
ISO C99. This standard is substantially completely supported, modulo bugs and floating-point issues (mainly but not entirely relating to optional C99 features from Annexes F and G). See http://gcc.gnu.org/c99status.html for more information. The names ‘c9x’ and ‘iso9899:199x’ are deprecated.
ISO C11, the 2011 revision of the ISO C standard. This standard is substantially completely supported, modulo bugs, floating-point issues (mainly but not entirely relating to optional C11 features from Annexes F and G) and the optional Annexes K (Bounds-checking interfaces) and L (Analyzability). The name ‘c1x’ is deprecated.
GNU dialect of ISO C90 (including some C99 features).
GNU dialect of ISO C99. The name ‘gnu9x’ is deprecated.
GNU dialect of ISO C11. This is the default for C code. The name ‘gnu1x’ is deprecated.
The 1998 ISO C++ standard plus the 2003 technical corrigendum and some additional defect reports. Same as -ansi for C++ code.
GNU dialect of -std=c++98. This is the default for C++ code.
The 2011 ISO C++ standard plus amendments. The name ‘c++0x’ is deprecated.
GNU dialect of -std=c++11. The name ‘gnu++0x’ is deprecated.
The 2014 ISO C++ standard plus amendments. The name ‘c++1y’ is deprecated.
GNU dialect of -std=c++14. The name ‘gnu++1y’ is deprecated.
The next revision of the ISO C++ standard, tentatively planned for 2017. Support is highly experimental, and will almost certainly change in incompatible ways in future releases.
GNU dialect of -std=c++1z. Support is highly experimental, and will almost certainly change in incompatible ways in future releases.
-fgnu89-inline
The option -fgnu89-inline tells GCC to use the traditional
GNU semantics for inline
functions when in C99 mode.
See An Inline Function is As Fast As a Macro.
Using this option is roughly equivalent to adding the
gnu_inline
function attribute to all inline functions
(see Function Attributes).
The option -fno-gnu89-inline explicitly tells GCC to use the
C99 semantics for inline
when in C99 or gnu99 mode (i.e., it
specifies the default behavior).
This option is not supported in -std=c90 or
-std=gnu90 mode.
The preprocessor macros __GNUC_GNU_INLINE__
and
__GNUC_STDC_INLINE__
may be used to check which semantics are
in effect for inline
functions. See Common Predefined
Macros in The C Preprocessor.
-aux-info filename
Output to the given filename prototyped declarations for all functions declared and/or defined in a translation unit, including those in header files. This option is silently ignored in any language other than C.
Besides declarations, the file indicates, in comments, the origin of each declaration (source file and line), whether the declaration was implicit, prototyped or unprototyped (‘I’, ‘N’ for new or ‘O’ for old, respectively, in the first character after the line number and the colon), and whether it came from a declaration or a definition (‘C’ or ‘F’, respectively, in the following character). In the case of function definitions, a K&R-style list of arguments followed by their declarations is also provided, inside comments, after the declaration.
-fallow-parameterless-variadic-functions
Accept variadic functions without named parameters.
Although it is possible to define such a function, this is not very useful as it is not possible to read the arguments. This is only supported for C as this construct is allowed by C++.
-fno-asm
Do not recognize asm
, inline
or typeof
as a
keyword, so that code can use these words as identifiers. You can use
the keywords __asm__
, __inline__
and __typeof__
instead. -ansi implies -fno-asm.
In C++, this switch only affects the typeof
keyword, since
asm
and inline
are standard keywords. You may want to
use the -fno-gnu-keywords flag instead, which has the same
effect. In C99 mode (-std=c99 or -std=gnu99), this
switch only affects the asm
and typeof
keywords, since
inline
is a standard keyword in ISO C99.
-fno-builtin
-fno-builtin-function
Don’t recognize built-in functions that do not begin with ‘__builtin_’ as prefix. See Other built-in functions provided by GCC, for details of the functions affected, including those which are not built-in functions when -ansi or -std options for strict ISO C conformance are used because they do not have an ISO standard meaning.
GCC normally generates special code to handle certain built-in functions
more efficiently; for instance, calls to alloca
may become single
instructions which adjust the stack directly, and calls to memcpy
may become inline copy loops. The resulting code is often both smaller
and faster, but since the function calls no longer appear as such, you
cannot set a breakpoint on those calls, nor can you change the behavior
of the functions by linking with a different library. In addition,
when a function is recognized as a built-in function, GCC may use
information about that function to warn about problems with calls to
that function, or to generate more efficient code, even if the
resulting code still contains calls to that function. For example,
warnings are given with -Wformat for bad calls to
printf
when printf
is built in and strlen
is
known not to modify global memory.
With the -fno-builtin-function option only the built-in function function is disabled. function must not begin with ‘__builtin_’. If a function is named that is not built-in in this version of GCC, this option is ignored. There is no corresponding -fbuiltin-function option; if you wish to enable built-in functions selectively when using -fno-builtin or -ffreestanding, you may define macros such as:
#define abs(n) __builtin_abs ((n)) #define strcpy(d, s) __builtin_strcpy ((d), (s))
-fhosted
Assert that compilation targets a hosted environment. This implies
-fbuiltin. A hosted environment is one in which the
entire standard library is available, and in which main
has a return
type of int
. Examples are nearly everything except a kernel.
This is equivalent to -fno-freestanding.
-ffreestanding
Assert that compilation targets a freestanding environment. This
implies -fno-builtin. A freestanding environment
is one in which the standard library may not exist, and program startup may
not necessarily be at main
. The most obvious example is an OS kernel.
This is equivalent to -fno-hosted.
See Language Standards Supported by GCC, for details of freestanding and hosted environments.
-fopenacc
Enable handling of OpenACC directives #pragma acc
in C/C++ and
!$acc
in Fortran. When -fopenacc is specified, the
compiler generates accelerated code according to the OpenACC Application
Programming Interface v2.0 http://www.openacc.org/. This option
implies -pthread, and thus is only supported on targets that
have support for -pthread.
Note that this is an experimental feature, incomplete, and subject to change in future versions of GCC. See https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/OpenACC for more information.
-fopenmp
Enable handling of OpenMP directives #pragma omp
in C/C++ and
!$omp
in Fortran. When -fopenmp is specified, the
compiler generates parallel code according to the OpenMP Application
Program Interface v4.0 http://www.openmp.org/. This option
implies -pthread, and thus is only supported on targets that
have support for -pthread. -fopenmp implies
-fopenmp-simd.
-fopenmp-simd
Enable handling of OpenMP’s SIMD directives with #pragma omp
in C/C++ and !$omp
in Fortran. Other OpenMP directives
are ignored.
-fcilkplus
Enable the usage of Cilk Plus language extension features for C/C++.
When the option -fcilkplus is specified, enable the usage of
the Cilk Plus Language extension features for C/C++. The present
implementation follows ABI version 1.2. This is an experimental
feature that is only partially complete, and whose interface may
change in future versions of GCC as the official specification
changes. Currently, all features but _Cilk_for
have been
implemented.
-fgnu-tm
When the option -fgnu-tm is specified, the compiler generates code for the Linux variant of Intel’s current Transactional Memory ABI specification document (Revision 1.1, May 6 2009). This is an experimental feature whose interface may change in future versions of GCC, as the official specification changes. Please note that not all architectures are supported for this feature.
For more information on GCC’s support for transactional memory, See The GNU Transactional Memory Library in GNU Transactional Memory Library.
Note that the transactional memory feature is not supported with non-call exceptions (-fnon-call-exceptions).
-fms-extensions
Accept some non-standard constructs used in Microsoft header files.
In C++ code, this allows member names in structures to be similar to previous types declarations.
typedef int UOW; struct ABC { UOW UOW; };
Some cases of unnamed fields in structures and unions are only accepted with this option. See Unnamed struct/union fields within structs/unions, for details.
Note that this option is off for all targets but x86 targets using ms-abi.
-fplan9-extensions
Accept some non-standard constructs used in Plan 9 code.
This enables -fms-extensions, permits passing pointers to structures with anonymous fields to functions that expect pointers to elements of the type of the field, and permits referring to anonymous fields declared using a typedef. See Unnamed struct/union fields within structs/unions, for details. This is only supported for C, not C++.
-trigraphs
Support ISO C trigraphs. The -ansi option (and -std options for strict ISO C conformance) implies -trigraphs.
-traditional
-traditional-cpp
Formerly, these options caused GCC to attempt to emulate a pre-standard C compiler. They are now only supported with the -E switch. The preprocessor continues to support a pre-standard mode. See the GNU CPP manual for details.
-fcond-mismatch
Allow conditional expressions with mismatched types in the second and third arguments. The value of such an expression is void. This option is not supported for C++.
-flax-vector-conversions
Allow implicit conversions between vectors with differing numbers of elements and/or incompatible element types. This option should not be used for new code.
-funsigned-char
Let the type char
be unsigned, like unsigned char
.
Each kind of machine has a default for what char
should
be. It is either like unsigned char
by default or like
signed char
by default.
Ideally, a portable program should always use signed char
or
unsigned char
when it depends on the signedness of an object.
But many programs have been written to use plain char
and
expect it to be signed, or expect it to be unsigned, depending on the
machines they were written for. This option, and its inverse, let you
make such a program work with the opposite default.
The type char
is always a distinct type from each of
signed char
or unsigned char
, even though its behavior
is always just like one of those two.
-fsigned-char
Let the type char
be signed, like signed char
.
Note that this is equivalent to -fno-unsigned-char, which is the negative form of -funsigned-char. Likewise, the option -fno-signed-char is equivalent to -funsigned-char.
-fsigned-bitfields
-funsigned-bitfields
-fno-signed-bitfields
-fno-unsigned-bitfields
These options control whether a bit-field is signed or unsigned, when the
declaration does not use either signed
or unsigned
. By
default, such a bit-field is signed, because this is consistent: the
basic integer types such as int
are signed types.
Next: C++ Dialect Options, Previous: Invoking G++, Up: Invoking GCC [Contents][Index]