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Is HDF5 C Source C99 Compliant? C89 Compatible?

HDF5 will use the C99 standard compiler whenever available but will attempt to keep the library source C89 compatible. C89 compatible means a standard C89 compiler will compile the HDF5 source correctly though some non-C89 features (e.g., long long datatype) may not be available.

However, as machines and software evolve, we feel it will get harder to maintain the C89 compatibility and may have to drop support for it in the future. We encourage all HDF users to migrate to the newer C99 compilers.

New features in C99 (e.g., newer datatypes) will not all be incorporated into the HDF5 library at once. They will be considered case by case depending on needs and resources.

- - Last modified: 13 February 2014