Obviously, you cannot write portable system code. You can do conditional compilation to target multiple platforms though. And when you do that you realize two t

Obviously, you cannot write portable system code. You can do conditional compilation to target multiple platforms though. And when you do that you realize two things: 1. No compiler is fully compliant with any standard. 2. Every compiler has bugs so even the compliant parts can be unusable. And then you realize it's not a big deal. Changes between platforms are greater than changes between compilers. When your targets have different endianness or, even better, mixed endianness between different PUs - the standard compliance of your code is the least of your worries. >It works if you only care about one specific compiler. Also works if you care about a finite number of specific compilers and architectures. >On those days the standard was the AT&T UNIX compiler. There were, probably, hundreds of compilers and C flavors even before the ANSI C. What one thought was "the standard" was very subjective.