Why does the C preprocessor interpret the word "linux" as the constant "1"?

Why does the C preprocessor in GCC interpret the word linux (small letters) as the constant 1?

test.c:

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{       
    int linux = 5;
    return 0;
}

Result of $ gcc -E test.c (stop after the preprocessing stage):

....
int main(void)
{
    int 1 = 5;
    return 0;
}

Which of course yields an error.

(BTW: There is no #define linux in the stdio.h file.)

Solution 1:

In the Old Days (pre-ANSI), predefining symbols such as unix and vax was a way to allow code to detect at compile time what system it was being compiled for. There was no official language standard back then (beyond the reference material at the back of the first edition of K&R), and C code of any complexity was typically a complex maze of #ifdefs to allow for differences between systems. These macro definitions were generally set by the compiler itself, not defined in a library header file. Since there were no real rules about which identifiers could be used by the implementation and which were reserved for programmers, compiler writers felt free to use simple names like unix and assumed that programmers would simply avoid using those names for their own purposes.

The 1989 ANSI C standard introduced rules restricting what symbols an implementation could legally predefine. A macro predefined by the compiler could only have a name starting with two underscores, or with an underscore followed by an uppercase letter, leaving programmers free to use identifiers not matching that pattern and not used in the standard library.

As a result, any compiler that predefines unix or linux is non-conforming, since it will fail to compile perfectly legal code that uses something like int linux = 5;.

As it happens, gcc is non-conforming by default -- but it can be made to conform (reasonably well) with the right command-line options:

gcc -std=c90 -pedantic ... # or -std=c89 or -ansi
gcc -std=c99 -pedantic
gcc -std=c11 -pedantic

See the gcc manual for more details.

gcc will be phasing out these definitions in future releases, so you shouldn't write code that depends on them. If your program needs to know whether it's being compiled for a Linux target or not it can check whether __linux__ is defined (assuming you're using gcc or a compiler that's compatible with it). See the GNU C preprocessor manual for more information.

A largely irrelevant aside: the "Best One Liner" winner of the 1987 International Obfuscated C Code Contest, by David Korn (yes, the author of the Korn Shell) took advantage of the predefined unix macro:

main() { printf(&unix["\021%six\012\0"],(unix)["have"]+"fun"-0x60);}

It prints "unix", but for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the spelling of the macro name.

Solution 2:

This appears to be an (undocumented) "GNU extension": [correction: I finally found a mention in the docs. See below.]

The following command uses the -dM option to print all preprocessor defines; since the input "file" is empty, it shows exactly the predefined macros. It was run with gcc-4.7.3 on a standard ubuntu install. You can see that the preprocessor is standard-aware. In total, there 243 macros with -std=gnu99 and 240 with -std=c99; I filtered the output for relevance.

$ cpp --std=c89 -dM < /dev/null | grep linux
#define __linux 1
#define __linux__ 1
#define __gnu_linux__ 1

$ cpp --std=gnu89 -dM < /dev/null | grep linux
#define __linux 1
#define __linux__ 1
#define __gnu_linux__ 1
#define linux 1

$ cpp --std=c99 -dM < /dev/null | grep linux
#define __linux 1
#define __linux__ 1
#define __gnu_linux__ 1

$ cpp --std=gnu99 -dM < /dev/null | grep linux
#define __linux 1
#define __linux__ 1
#define __gnu_linux__ 1
#define linux 1

The "gnu standard" versions also #define unix. (Using c11 and gnu11 produces the same results.)

I suppose they had their reasons, but it seems to me to make the default installation of gcc (which compiles C code with -std=gnu89 unless otherwise specified) non-conformant, and -- as in this question -- surprising. Polluting the global namespace with macros whose names don't begin with an underscore is not permitted in a conformant implementation. (6.8.10p2: "Any other predefined macro names shall begin with a leading underscore followed by an uppercase letter or a second underscore," but, as mentioned in Appendix J.5 (portability issues), such names are often predefined.)

When I originally wrote this answer, I wasn't able to find any documentation in gcc about this issue, but I did finally discover it, not in C implementation-defined behaviour nor in C extensions but in the cpp manual section 3.7.3, where it notes that:

We are slowly phasing out all predefined macros which are outside the reserved namespace. You should never use them in new programs…

Solution 3:

Because linux is a built-in macro defined when the compiler is running on, or compiling for (if it is a cross-compiler), Linux.

There are a lot of such predefined macros. With GCC, you can use:

cp /dev/null emptyfile.c
gcc -E -dM emptyfile.c

to get a list of macros. (I've not managed to persuade GCC to accept /dev/null directly, but the empty file seems to work OK.) With GCC 4.8.1 running on Mac OS X 10.8.5, I got the output:

#define __DBL_MIN_EXP__ (-1021)
#define __UINT_LEAST16_MAX__ 65535
#define __ATOMIC_ACQUIRE 2
#define __FLT_MIN__ 1.17549435082228750797e-38F
#define __UINT_LEAST8_TYPE__ unsigned char
#define __INTMAX_C(c) c ## L
#define __CHAR_BIT__ 8
#define __UINT8_MAX__ 255
#define __WINT_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__ 1234
#define __SIZE_MAX__ 18446744073709551615UL
#define __WCHAR_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __GCC_HAVE_SYNC_COMPARE_AND_SWAP_1 1
#define __GCC_HAVE_SYNC_COMPARE_AND_SWAP_2 1
#define __GCC_HAVE_SYNC_COMPARE_AND_SWAP_4 1
#define __DBL_DENORM_MIN__ ((double)4.94065645841246544177e-324L)
#define __GCC_HAVE_SYNC_COMPARE_AND_SWAP_8 1
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_CHAR_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __FLT_EVAL_METHOD__ 0
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_CHAR32_T_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __x86_64 1
#define __UINT_FAST64_MAX__ 18446744073709551615ULL
#define __SIG_ATOMIC_TYPE__ int
#define __DBL_MIN_10_EXP__ (-307)
#define __FINITE_MATH_ONLY__ 0
#define __GNUC_PATCHLEVEL__ 1
#define __UINT_FAST8_MAX__ 255
#define __DEC64_MAX_EXP__ 385
#define __INT8_C(c) c
#define __UINT_LEAST64_MAX__ 18446744073709551615ULL
#define __SHRT_MAX__ 32767
#define __LDBL_MAX__ 1.18973149535723176502e+4932L
#define __UINT_LEAST8_MAX__ 255
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_BOOL_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __APPLE_CC__ 1
#define __UINTMAX_TYPE__ long unsigned int
#define __DEC32_EPSILON__ 1E-6DF
#define __UINT32_MAX__ 4294967295U
#define __LDBL_MAX_EXP__ 16384
#define __WINT_MIN__ (-__WINT_MAX__ - 1)
#define __SCHAR_MAX__ 127
#define __WCHAR_MIN__ (-__WCHAR_MAX__ - 1)
#define __INT64_C(c) c ## LL
#define __DBL_DIG__ 15
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_POINTER_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __SIZEOF_INT__ 4
#define __SIZEOF_POINTER__ 8
#define __USER_LABEL_PREFIX__ _
#define __STDC_HOSTED__ 1
#define __LDBL_HAS_INFINITY__ 1
#define __FLT_EPSILON__ 1.19209289550781250000e-7F
#define __LDBL_MIN__ 3.36210314311209350626e-4932L
#define __DEC32_MAX__ 9.999999E96DF
#define __strong 
#define __INT32_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __SIZEOF_LONG__ 8
#define __APPLE__ 1
#define __UINT16_C(c) c
#define __DECIMAL_DIG__ 21
#define __LDBL_HAS_QUIET_NAN__ 1
#define __DYNAMIC__ 1
#define __GNUC__ 4
#define __MMX__ 1
#define __FLT_HAS_DENORM__ 1
#define __SIZEOF_LONG_DOUBLE__ 16
#define __BIGGEST_ALIGNMENT__ 16
#define __DBL_MAX__ ((double)1.79769313486231570815e+308L)
#define __INT_FAST32_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __DBL_HAS_INFINITY__ 1
#define __DEC32_MIN_EXP__ (-94)
#define __INT_FAST16_TYPE__ short int
#define __LDBL_HAS_DENORM__ 1
#define __DEC128_MAX__ 9.999999999999999999999999999999999E6144DL
#define __INT_LEAST32_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __DEC32_MIN__ 1E-95DF
#define __weak 
#define __DBL_MAX_EXP__ 1024
#define __DEC128_EPSILON__ 1E-33DL
#define __SSE2_MATH__ 1
#define __ATOMIC_HLE_RELEASE 131072
#define __PTRDIFF_MAX__ 9223372036854775807L
#define __amd64 1
#define __tune_core2__ 1
#define __ATOMIC_HLE_ACQUIRE 65536
#define __LONG_LONG_MAX__ 9223372036854775807LL
#define __SIZEOF_SIZE_T__ 8
#define __SIZEOF_WINT_T__ 4
#define __GXX_ABI_VERSION 1002
#define __FLT_MIN_EXP__ (-125)
#define __INT_FAST64_TYPE__ long long int
#define __DBL_MIN__ ((double)2.22507385850720138309e-308L)
#define __LP64__ 1
#define __DEC128_MIN__ 1E-6143DL
#define __REGISTER_PREFIX__ 
#define __UINT16_MAX__ 65535
#define __DBL_HAS_DENORM__ 1
#define __UINT8_TYPE__ unsigned char
#define __NO_INLINE__ 1
#define __FLT_MANT_DIG__ 24
#define __VERSION__ "4.8.1"
#define __UINT64_C(c) c ## ULL
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_INT_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __FLOAT_WORD_ORDER__ __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__
#define __INT32_C(c) c
#define __DEC64_EPSILON__ 1E-15DD
#define __ORDER_PDP_ENDIAN__ 3412
#define __DEC128_MIN_EXP__ (-6142)
#define __INT_FAST32_TYPE__ int
#define __UINT_LEAST16_TYPE__ short unsigned int
#define __INT16_MAX__ 32767
#define __ENVIRONMENT_MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MIN_REQUIRED__ 1080
#define __SIZE_TYPE__ long unsigned int
#define __UINT64_MAX__ 18446744073709551615ULL
#define __INT8_TYPE__ signed char
#define __FLT_RADIX__ 2
#define __INT_LEAST16_TYPE__ short int
#define __LDBL_EPSILON__ 1.08420217248550443401e-19L
#define __UINTMAX_C(c) c ## UL
#define __SSE_MATH__ 1
#define __k8 1
#define __SIG_ATOMIC_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_WCHAR_T_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __SIZEOF_PTRDIFF_T__ 8
#define __x86_64__ 1
#define __DEC32_SUBNORMAL_MIN__ 0.000001E-95DF
#define __INT_FAST16_MAX__ 32767
#define __UINT_FAST32_MAX__ 4294967295U
#define __UINT_LEAST64_TYPE__ long long unsigned int
#define __FLT_HAS_QUIET_NAN__ 1
#define __FLT_MAX_10_EXP__ 38
#define __LONG_MAX__ 9223372036854775807L
#define __DEC128_SUBNORMAL_MIN__ 0.000000000000000000000000000000001E-6143DL
#define __FLT_HAS_INFINITY__ 1
#define __UINT_FAST16_TYPE__ short unsigned int
#define __DEC64_MAX__ 9.999999999999999E384DD
#define __CHAR16_TYPE__ short unsigned int
#define __PRAGMA_REDEFINE_EXTNAME 1
#define __INT_LEAST16_MAX__ 32767
#define __DEC64_MANT_DIG__ 16
#define __INT64_MAX__ 9223372036854775807LL
#define __UINT_LEAST32_MAX__ 4294967295U
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_LONG_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __INT_LEAST64_TYPE__ long long int
#define __INT16_TYPE__ short int
#define __INT_LEAST8_TYPE__ signed char
#define __DEC32_MAX_EXP__ 97
#define __INT_FAST8_MAX__ 127
#define __INTPTR_MAX__ 9223372036854775807L
#define __LITTLE_ENDIAN__ 1
#define __SSE2__ 1
#define __LDBL_MANT_DIG__ 64
#define __CONSTANT_CFSTRINGS__ 1
#define __DBL_HAS_QUIET_NAN__ 1
#define __SIG_ATOMIC_MIN__ (-__SIG_ATOMIC_MAX__ - 1)
#define __code_model_small__ 1
#define __k8__ 1
#define __INTPTR_TYPE__ long int
#define __UINT16_TYPE__ short unsigned int
#define __WCHAR_TYPE__ int
#define __SIZEOF_FLOAT__ 4
#define __pic__ 2
#define __UINTPTR_MAX__ 18446744073709551615UL
#define __DEC64_MIN_EXP__ (-382)
#define __INT_FAST64_MAX__ 9223372036854775807LL
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_TEST_AND_SET_TRUEVAL 1
#define __FLT_DIG__ 6
#define __UINT_FAST64_TYPE__ long long unsigned int
#define __INT_MAX__ 2147483647
#define __MACH__ 1
#define __amd64__ 1
#define __INT64_TYPE__ long long int
#define __FLT_MAX_EXP__ 128
#define __ORDER_BIG_ENDIAN__ 4321
#define __DBL_MANT_DIG__ 53
#define __INT_LEAST64_MAX__ 9223372036854775807LL
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_CHAR16_T_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __DEC64_MIN__ 1E-383DD
#define __WINT_TYPE__ int
#define __UINT_LEAST32_TYPE__ unsigned int
#define __SIZEOF_SHORT__ 2
#define __SSE__ 1
#define __LDBL_MIN_EXP__ (-16381)
#define __INT_LEAST8_MAX__ 127
#define __SIZEOF_INT128__ 16
#define __LDBL_MAX_10_EXP__ 4932
#define __ATOMIC_RELAXED 0
#define __DBL_EPSILON__ ((double)2.22044604925031308085e-16L)
#define _LP64 1
#define __UINT8_C(c) c
#define __INT_LEAST32_TYPE__ int
#define __SIZEOF_WCHAR_T__ 4
#define __UINT64_TYPE__ long long unsigned int
#define __INT_FAST8_TYPE__ signed char
#define __DBL_DECIMAL_DIG__ 17
#define __FXSR__ 1
#define __DEC_EVAL_METHOD__ 2
#define __UINT32_C(c) c ## U
#define __INTMAX_MAX__ 9223372036854775807L
#define __BYTE_ORDER__ __ORDER_LITTLE_ENDIAN__
#define __FLT_DENORM_MIN__ 1.40129846432481707092e-45F
#define __INT8_MAX__ 127
#define __PIC__ 2
#define __UINT_FAST32_TYPE__ unsigned int
#define __CHAR32_TYPE__ unsigned int
#define __FLT_MAX__ 3.40282346638528859812e+38F
#define __INT32_TYPE__ int
#define __SIZEOF_DOUBLE__ 8
#define __FLT_MIN_10_EXP__ (-37)
#define __INTMAX_TYPE__ long int
#define __DEC128_MAX_EXP__ 6145
#define __ATOMIC_CONSUME 1
#define __GNUC_MINOR__ 8
#define __UINTMAX_MAX__ 18446744073709551615UL
#define __DEC32_MANT_DIG__ 7
#define __DBL_MAX_10_EXP__ 308
#define __LDBL_DENORM_MIN__ 3.64519953188247460253e-4951L
#define __INT16_C(c) c
#define __STDC__ 1
#define __PTRDIFF_TYPE__ long int
#define __ATOMIC_SEQ_CST 5
#define __UINT32_TYPE__ unsigned int
#define __UINTPTR_TYPE__ long unsigned int
#define __DEC64_SUBNORMAL_MIN__ 0.000000000000001E-383DD
#define __DEC128_MANT_DIG__ 34
#define __LDBL_MIN_10_EXP__ (-4931)
#define __SIZEOF_LONG_LONG__ 8
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_LLONG_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __LDBL_DIG__ 18
#define __FLT_DECIMAL_DIG__ 9
#define __UINT_FAST16_MAX__ 65535
#define __GNUC_GNU_INLINE__ 1
#define __GCC_ATOMIC_SHORT_LOCK_FREE 2
#define __SSE3__ 1
#define __UINT_FAST8_TYPE__ unsigned char
#define __ATOMIC_ACQ_REL 4
#define __ATOMIC_RELEASE 3

That's 236 macros from an empty file. When I added #include <stdio.h> to the file, the number of macros defined went up to 505. These includes all sorts of platform-identifying macros.