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In the olden days around VS 6, Microsoft only had one "C/C++" compiler. Needless to say it not very standard compliant, but C was still mostly a C++ subset, and
by captainmuon 5y ago
In the olden days around VS 6, Microsoft only had one "C/C++" compiler. Needless to say it not very standard compliant, but C was still mostly a C++ subset, and the differences were anyway smaller than the deviations of MSVC from the C++ standard. So it made sense to just compile everything as C++.
- bluGill 5y agoAFAIK microsoft has never had a C compiler. C is enough of a subset of C++ that you can use MSVC to build most programs, but MSVC doesn't officially support C to this day. C++ tries to bring in everything of the latest C standard, but sometimes that isn't possible, or C++ has a better way (better generally because of some issue that doesn't exist in C in the first place). The C standard committee is aware of C++, and tries not to break the ability of C++ to use new C standards, but nobody is perfect.
- spacechild1 5y ago> AFAIK microsoft has never had a C compiler. Well, MSVC compiles .c files as C, which I guess makes it also a C compiler? It supports most of C99 by now. > MSVC doesn't officially support C to this day. Oh, it does: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/walkthrough-compile-a-c-program-on-the-command-line?redirectedfrom=MSDN&view=msvc-160 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/walkthrough-compi...
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThey had a standalone C compiler for kernel drivers.