Re: The history of stdint.h ?

[David Cuthbert <dacut@xxxxxxxxx>]

walt wrote:
> Thanks!  I do have a puzzle for you:  I've been comparing several
> OS's and find they are remarkably different WRT stdint.h.

Depending on the OS, the appearance and content of stdint.h vary for 
compatibility reasons.

The features provided by stdint.h -- stuff like int8_t, int16_t, etc. -- 
were always needed.  Unfortunately, there was no one way to providing it 
-- some folks used #ifdef checks on compilers/OSes/architectures, others 
used autoconf, etc.

Which standard the "std" in "stdint.h" respresents is up for 
considerable debate.  I'm most familiar with what C99 requires; others 
have mentioned the Single Unix Specification.  But until these see more 
widespread adoption, all you can depend upon is it being the standard 
for release X of OS Y on architecture Z -- which might even mean it 
doesn't exist at all (e.g., FreeBSD 4.8).