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I've been studying the GCC source code and I noticed that most (if not all) target-specific source code files (like arm.c for example) use the old K&R function style.

Is there any particular reason for this? Backward compatibility? Portability?

Jonathan Leffler
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Mihai Oprea
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1 Answers1

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So that you can compile gcc on a system with non-GNU, and potentially really old, compiler, to just get a better compiler on this very system.

jørgensen
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    I think that recent versions of gcc require at least C89 (commonly called "ANSI") compliance in the host compiler, but it's likely that the code just hasn't been updated yet. – Keith Thompson Dec 10 '11 at 23:11