g++ setup

[John D Lamb]

On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 13:58 -0700, Karl F. Larsen wrote: 
> 	I have tried to understand man g++ which has 13680 lines of 
> information. There are two basic types of g++ which are used 
> in the USA. They are Standard C++ and ANSI/ISO Standard C++.
> 
> 	Is there a way to change g++ so it uses either of those 
> standards? In 10.04 I find it set for ANSI/ISO Standard C++ 
> and would like to change it.

AFAIK g++ without any options compiles by default against the 1998 ISO
standard C++ with some gnu extensions. This is equivalent to

$ g++ -std=gnu++98 …

If you want strict ISO standard, use

$ g++ -ansi …

or

$ g++ -std=c++98 …

There is also

$ g++ -std=c++0x …

for more recent versions of the standard. But note that g++ doesn’t yet
support (I think) support everything in every standard. I don’t think
any c++ compiler does. Typically you get some problems with some kinds
of template code.

If you’re looking for compatibility with other systems, -ansi might
help, though you might also want to use the -pedantic flag so that g++
gives errors rather than warnings. If you just want the compiler to stop
you writing poor code (e.g. functions that don’t return a value when the
should), the -pedantic and -Wall flags help.

-- 
JDL