7.12 Backwards Compatibility

Now that there is a definitive ISO standard C++, G++ has a specification to adhere to. The C++ language evolved over time, and features that used to be acceptable in previous drafts of the standard, such as the ARM [Annotated C++ Reference Manual], are no longer accepted. In order to allow compilation of C++ written to such drafts, G++ contains some backwards compatibilities. All such backwards compatibility features are liable to disappear in future versions of G++. They should be considered deprecated. See Deprecated Features.

For scope

If a variable is declared at for scope, it used to remain in scope until the end of the scope that contained the for statement (rather than just within the for scope). The deprecated -fno-for-scope option enables this non-standard behavior. Without the option, G++ retains this, but issues a warning, if such a variable is accessed outside the for scope.

The behavior is deprecated, only available with -std=c++98 -std=gnu++98 languages and you must use the -fpermissive option to enable it. The behavior will be removed.

Friend Injection

The -ffriend-injection option makes injected friends visible to regular name lookup, unlike standard C++. This option is deprecated and will be removed.

Implicit C language

Old C system header files did not contain an extern "C" {…} scope to set the language. On such systems, all header files are implicitly scoped inside a C language scope. Also, an empty prototype () is treated as an unspecified number of arguments, rather than no arguments, as C++ demands.