C Keywords

“Keywords” are words that have special meaning to the C compiler. In translation phases 7 and 8, an identifier cannot have the same spelling and case as a C keyword. (See a description of translation phases in the Preprocessor Reference; for information on identifiers, see Identifiers.) The C language uses the following keywords:

auto double int struct
break else long switch
case enum register typedef
char extern return union
const float short unsigned
continue for signed void
default goto sizeof volatile
do if static while

You cannot redefine keywords. However, you can specify text to be substituted for keywords before compilation by using C preprocessor directives.

Microsoft Specific —>

The ANSI C standard allows identifiers with two leading underscores to be reserved for compiler implementations. Therefore, the Microsoft convention is to precede Microsoft-specific keyword names with double underscores. These words cannot be used as identifier names. For a description of the ANSI rules for naming identifiers, including the use of double underscores, see Identifiers.

The following keywords and special identifiers are recognized by the Microsoft C compiler:

__asm dllimport2 __int8 naked2
__based1 __except __int16 __stdcall
__cdecl __fastcall __int32 thread2
__declspec __finally __int64 __try
dllexport2 __inline __leave

1. The __based keyword has limited uses for 32-bit target compilations.

2. These are special identifiers when used with __declspec; their use in other contexts is not restricted.

Microsoft extensions are enabled by default. To ensure that your programs are fully portable, you can disable Microsoft extensions by specifying the /Za option (compile for ANSI compatibility) during compilation. When you do this, Microsoft-specific keywords are disabled.

When Microsoft extensions are enabled, you can use the keywords listed above in your programs. For ANSI compliance, most of these keywords are prefaced by a double underscore. The four exceptions, dllexport, dllimport, naked, and thread, are used only with __declspec and therefore do not require a leading double underscore. For backward compatibility, single-underscore versions of the rest of the keywords are supported.

END Microsoft Specific