The New C

C99 is the C standard ratified by the ANSI and ISO standardizaion groups. It presents a significant amount of changes to the C language. These changes are the result of sibling competition between C and C++. The initial version of C is named after Kernighan and Ritchie. Classic C is K&R C with structure assignment, enumerations, and void. C89, or ANSI C, had some influences from C with Classes. For example, C89 adopted function prototypes in a similar form to what C with Classes provided. The most significant changes in C99, compared to C89, support a variety of new features.

Following is a brief list of C99 features:

• Boolean data types <stdbool.h>
• Increased identifier size limits
• C++ style/line comments
• Inline functions
• Restricted pointers
• Variable Declarations
• Variable length arrays
• New long long type

Specific standards

The new C standard for gcc is applied with the following command.

$gcc -Wall -std=c99 filename.c

Let us consider the following program named bool.c:

/*bool.c */
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  bool b = true;
  if(b)
    printf("It is a true Boolean data type supported only in C99\n");
  else
   printf("Boolean data type is not supported in C99\n");
  return 0;
}

$ gcc -Wall -std=c99  bool.c
$ ./a.out
It is a true Boolean data type supported only in C99

Linking C99 programs with external libraries

The C standard library consists of a collection of headers and library routines used by C programs. The external library is usually stored with an extension .a and known as a static library. For instance, the C math library is typically stored in the file /usr/lib/libm.a on Linux. The prototype declarations for the functions in the math library are specified in the header file /usr/include/math.h.

/*hypotenuse.c*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  float x,y,h;
  //C99 program to demonstrate the use of external math library function
  printf("\n Enter the values for x and y\n");
  scanf("%f %f", &x,&y);
  h=hypotf(x,y);
  printf(" The Hypotenuse of x and y is %f\n", h);
  return 0;
}

Consider the above program hypotenuse.c. The following commands are then executed:

$ gcc -Wall -std=c99 hypotenuse.c /usr/lib/libm.so -o hypt
$ ./hypt
Enter the values for x and y
6.0
8.0
The Hypotenuse of x and y is 10.000000

gcc provides an -l option to override long paths when linking against libraries. The following command illustrates this option:

$ gcc -Wall -std=c99  hypotenuse.c -lm -o hypt
$ ./hypt
Enter the values for x and y
4.0 8.0
The Hypotenuse of x and y is 8.944272

Mixed declarations

ISO C99 allows declarations and code to simultaneously exist in compound statements. The following programming example illustrates this feature:

/*mixednewdec.c*/
#include<stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char*argv[])
{
  for(int i=2; i>0 ; --i)
  {
    printf("%d", i);
    int j = i * 2;
    printf("\n %d \n", j);
  }
}

$ gcc -Wall -std=c99  mixednewdec.c
$ ./a.out
2
4
1
2

The identifier is visible from where it is declared to the end of the enclosing block.

Variable Length Arrays(VLA)

Variable Length Arrays are not dynamic arrays. Rather, they are created with different sizes each time a declaration is encountered. Only local arrays which are within block scope can be variable arrays.

/*vla.c*/
#include<stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int j = 10;
  void func(int);
  func(j);
  return 0;
}

void func(int x)
{
  int arr[x];
  for(int i=1; i<=x; i++)
  {
    int j=2;
    arr[i] = j*i;
    printf("%d\n",arr[i]);
  }
}

Previously array sizes were of fixed size. C99 removes this constraint. It also frees you from performing allocate( ) and delete( ) operations on memory explicitly. The output of VLA is illustrated below.

$ gcc -Wall -std=c99 vla.c
$ ./a.out
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20

New Long Long Type

Long long is 64 bit wide integer type. This is the biggest integer type in the C language standard. The long long type was specified to give 32-bit machines a way to handle 64-bit data when interactingwith 64 bit machines. Consider the following C program longdt.c:

/*longdt.c*/
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  long long num1 = 123456789101LL;
  long int num2 = 12345678;
  printf("Size of %lld is %u bytes\n", num1 ,sizeof(num1));
  printf("Size of %ld is %u bytes\n", num2 ,sizeof(num2));
  return 0;
}

$ gcc -Wall -std=c99 longdt.c
$ ./a.out
Size of 123456789101 is 8 bytes
Size of 12345678 is 4 bytes

Restricted Pointers

C99 lets you prefix pointer declarations with the restrict keyword. Thus the pointer itself will be used to access the object it points to. This features takes care of the shortfall of aliasing. It also aids in code optimization. For example, consider the signature of strcat() function in the string.h file:

char *strcat (char* restrict dest,  const char * src)

The source string is appended to the end of the destination string. Here, the destination and source strings can be referenced only through the pointers dest and src. The compiler can then optimize the code generated for the function.

Inline Functions

Inline functions save the overhead of function calls. Consider the following program inlinecode.c to demonstrate the use of inline in C99.

/*myheader.h*/

#ifndef MYHEADER_H
#define MYHEADER_H

inline int min(int a, int b)
{
  return a < b ? a : b;
}

#endif

/*inlinecode.c*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include "myheader.h"
extern int min(int,int);
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  int a =10, b=20;
  int min_value = min(10,20);
  printf(" The minimum of a and b is %d\n", min_value);
  return 0;
}

$ gcc -Wall -std = c99 inlinecode.c
$ ./a.out
The minimum of a and b is 10

Conclusion

C99 is a step ahead in the evolution of ANSI C. It incorporates elegant features like single line comments, boolean data types and larger size data types. C99 also supports code optimization through restricted pointer usage and supports inline functions. Now programmers can exploit these new features and further optimize their code for programming efficiency.