GNU C __attribute__

One of the best (but little known) features of GNU C is the __attribute__ mechanism, which allows a developer to attach characteristics to function declarations to allow the compiler to perform more error checking. It was designed in a way to be compatible with non-GNU implementations, and we've been using this for years in highly portable code with very good results.

Table of Contents

1. __attribute__ format
2. __attribute__ noreturn
3. __attribute__ const
4. Putting them together
5. Compatibility with non-GNU compilers
6. Other References

Note that __attribute__ spelled with two underscores before and two after, and there are always two sets of parentheses surrounding the contents. There is a good reason for this - see below. Gnu CC needs to use the -Wall compiler directive to enable this (yes, there is a finer degree of warnings control available, but we are very big fans of max warnings anyway).