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C23 is the informal name for ISO/IEC 9899:2024, the next standard for the C programming language, which will replace C17 (standard ISO/IEC 9899:2018).[1] It was started in 2016 informally as C2x,[2] and expected to be published in 2024.[3] The most recent publicly available working draft of C23 was released on April 1, 2023.[4] The first WG14 meeting for the C2x draft was held in October 2019,[5] virtual remote meetings were held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, then various teleconference meetings continued to occur through 2024.
Changes integrated into the latest working draft of C23 are listed below.[4]
memset_explicit()
function in <string.h>
to erase sensitive data, where memory store must always be performed regardless of optimizations.[6]memccpy()
function in <string.h>
to efficiently concatenate strings – similar to POSIX and SVID C extensions.[7]strdup()
and strndup()
functions in <string.h>
to allocate a copy of a string – similar to POSIX and SVID C extensions.[8]memalignment()
function in <stdlib.h>
to determine the byte alignment of a pointer.[9]<stdbit.h>
to examine many integer types. All start with stdc_
to minimize conflict with legacy code and 3rd party libraries.[10]
*
with uc
, us
, ui
, ul
, ull
for five function names, or blank for a type-generic macro.[10]stdc_count_ones*()
and stdc_count_zeros*()
to count number of 1 or 0 bits in value.[10]stdc_leading_ones*()
and stdc_leading_zeros*()
to count leading 1 or 0 bits in value.[10]stdc_trailing_ones*()
and stdc_trailing_zeros*()
to count trailing 1 or 0 bits in value.[10]stdc_first_leading_one*()
and stdc_first_leading_zero*()
to find first leading bit with 1 or 0 in value.[10]stdc_first_trailing_one*()
and stdc_first_trailing_zero*()
to find first trailing bit with 1 or 0 in value.[10]stdc_has_single_bit*()
to determine if value is an exact power of 2 (return true if and only if there is a single 1 bit).[10]stdc_bit_floor*()
to determine the largest integral power of 2 that is not greater than value.[10]stdc_bit_ceil*()
to determine the smallest integral power of 2 that is not less than value.[10]stdc_bit_width*()
to determine number of bits to represent a value.[10]timegm()
function in <time.h>
to convert time structure into calendar time value - similar to function in glibc and musl libraries.[11]<math.h>
functions based on IEEE 754-2019 recommendations, such as trigonometry functions operating on units of and exp10
.[12]%b
binary conversion specifier to printf()
function family.[13]%b
binary conversion specifier to scanf()
function family.[13]0b
and 0B
binary conversion support to strtol()
and wcstol()
function families.[13]bsearch()
, bsearch_s()
, memchr()
, strchr()
, strpbrk()
, strrchr()
, strstr()
, and their wide counterparts wmemchr()
, wcschr()
, wcspbrk()
, wcsrchr()
, wcsstr()
return a const qualified object if one was passed to them.[14]#elifdef
and #elifndef
directives,[15] which are essentially equivalent to #elif defined
and #elif !defined
. Both directives were added to C++23 standard and GCC 12.[16]#embed
directive for binary resource inclusion and __has_embed
allowing the availability of a resource to be checked by preprocessor directives.[17]#warning
directive for diagnostics.[18]__has_include
allowing the availability of a header to be checked by preprocessor directives.[19]__has_c_attribute
allowing the availability of an attribute to be checked by preprocessor directives.[20] (see "C++ compatibility" group for new attribute feature)__VA_OPT__
functional macro for variadic macros which expands to its argument only if a variadic argument has been passed to the containing macro.[21]nullptr_t
, a null pointer type.[22]_BitInt(N)
and unsigned _BitInt(N)
types for bit-precise integers. Add BITINT_MAXWIDTH
macro for maximum bit width.[23][24]ckd_add()
, ckd_sub()
, ckd_mul()
macros for checked integer operations.[25]const
with arrays.[27]typeof(...)
operator.[28]auto
keyword was changed to cause type inference while also retaining its old meaning of a storage class specifier if used alongside a type. Unlike C++, C23 allows type inference only for object definitions (no inferring function return type or function parameter type).[29]intmax_t
(N2888).[31]nullptr
constant for nullptr_t
type.[22]wb
and uwb
integer literal suffixes for _BitInt(N)
and unsigned _BitInt(N)
types,[32] such as 6uwb
yields an unsigned _BitInt(3)
, and -6wb
yields a signed _BitInt(4)
which has three value bits and one sign bit.0b
and 0B
binary literal constant prefixes,[33] such as 0b10101010
(equating to 0xAA).'
digit separator to literal constants,[34] such as 0xFE'DC'BA'98
(equating to 0xFEDCBA98), 299'792'458
(equating to 299792458), 1.414'213'562
(equating to 1.414213562).enum
.[35]enum
s with no fixed underlying type to store values that are not representable by int
.[36]true
and false
keywords.[37]alignas
, alignof
, bool
, static_assert
, thread_local
keywords. Previously defined keywords become alternative spellings: _Alignas
, _Alignof
, _Bool
, _Static_assert
, _Thread_local
.[38]_BitInt
keyword (see "types" group)typeof
and typeof_unqual
keywords (see "types" group)nullptr
keyword (see "constants" group)constexpr
keyword (see "other" group)_Decimal32
, _Decimal64
, _Decimal128
keywords for (optional) decimal floating-point arithmetic (see "other" group){}
(including initialization of VLAs).[41]va_start
macro no longer needs a second argument nor does it evaluate any argument after the first one if present.[42][[]]
._Static_assert
for compatibility with C++17.[44]void foo()
are understood as taking no arguments (see removal of K&R function declarations){}
, variadic functions without named argument, C++11 style attributes, _Static_assert
(see Syntax). For labels at the end of compound statements a corresponding change was made to C++23.[45][[deprecated]]
,[47] [[fallthrough]]
,[48] [[maybe_unused]]
,[49] [[nodiscard]]
,[50] and [[noreturn]]
attribute for compatibility with C++11, then deprecate _Noreturn
, noreturn
, header <stdnoreturn.h>
features introduced in C11.[51] Duplicate attributes are allowed for compatibility with C++23.[52] All standard attributes can also be surrounded by double underscores (e.g. [[__deprecated__]]
is equivalent to [[deprecated]]
).u8
prefix for character literals to represent UTF-8 encoding for compatibility with C++17.[53][54]#elifdef
and #elifndef
preprocessing directives for compatibility with C++23.[15] (see "preprocessor" group)constexpr
specifier for objects but not functions, unlike C++'s equivalent.[57]char8_t
type for storing UTF-8 encoded data and change the type of u8 character constants and string literals to char8_t
. Also, the functions mbrtoc8()
and c8rtomb()
to convert a narrow multibyte character to UTF-8 encoding and a single code point from UTF-8 to a narrow multibyte character representation respectively.[58]char16_t
strings and literals shall be UTF-16 encoded, and all char32_t
strings and literals shall be UTF-32 encoded, unless otherwise explicitly specified.[59]Some old obsolete features are either removed or deprecated from the working draft of C23:
*_HAS_SUBNORM
macros in <float.h>
are obsolescent features.[65]The GCC 9,[66] Clang 9.0,[67] and Pelles C 11.00[68] compilers implement an experimental compiler flag to support this standard.