Initial C17 Language Support Lands In LLVM Clang 6.0 SVN

Back in October is when GCC began prepping C17 support patches for their compiler as a minor update to the C programming language. LLVM's Clang compiler has now landed its initial support for C17.

C17 is a minor "bug fix version" over the C11 standard. The C17 specification is still being firmed up and following the initial support appearing in GCC, it's now in Clang.

The latest Clang Git/SVN code now supports the -std=c17, -std=gnu17, and std=iso9899:2017 options.

Worth noting is C17 might end up becoming known as C18. C17 has yet to go to ballot for approval with the year quickly drawing to an end plus the fact of the specification then needing to be published. GCC has already aliased the c18/gnu18 options to reflect that it might be called C18, but the initial Clang patches do not. GCC made the assumption early of C17/C18 to avoid confusion/problems down the road while it appears Clang is holding out until finding out if aliasing as C18 is really needed.

Regardless, LLVM Clang 6.0 as is set to be released around March and GCC 8.1 that should also be released around that time should have C17/C18 squared away.