How to "simulate" C99 in Visual Studio for variables declaration

c visual-studio-2012 c99 c89
eang picture eang · Nov 9, 2012 · Viewed 14.9k times · Source

I'm using Visual Studio 2012 to develop simple Win32 C programs. I know that the VS compiler only supports C89, but I'd like to know if there is a way to override this limitation.

In particular I'd like to declare variables anywhere in my code, instead of only at the beginning of scope blocks (as C89 requires).

Thanks in advance.

Answer

Christoph picture Christoph · Nov 9, 2012

The choices I see:

  • stick with MSVC and switch to C++
  • stick with MSVC and use a precompiler that translates C99 to C90 (Comeau, c99-to-c89)
  • switch to a toolchain that supports more recent revisions of the C language (Intel, MinGW, Clang, Pelles-C,...)

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