How to "simulate" C99 in Visual Studio for variables declaration

Question

I'm using Visual Studio 2012 to develop simple Win32 C programs. I know that the VS compiler only supports C89, but I'd like to know if there is a way to override this limitation.

In particular I'd like to declare variables anywhere in my code, instead of only at the beginning of scope blocks (as C89 requires).

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The choices I see:

• stick with MSVC and switch to C++
• stick with MSVC and use a precompiler that translates C99 to C90 (Comeau, c99-to-c89)
• switch to a toolchain that supports more recent revisions of the C language (Intel, MinGW, Clang, Pelles-C,...)

Answer 2

This seems like a dated thread, but having landed here first while I was searching for the same question I thought I should post an update:

As of VS13, the Visual C++ compiler supports C99 style variable declarations. More details here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2013/06/28/c-11-14-stl-features-fixes-and-breaking-changes-in-vs-2013.aspx

Answer 3

Build your app using the C++ compiler. This is the easiest way. You can still write C code just name the file *.cpp