It is a misconception that C++ is a superset of C

This blog post shows (with a counterexample) that C++ is not a superset of C, i.e. there is a valid C program which is not a valid C++ program.

It's easy to find a counterexample: just use a C++ keyword as a variable name in C. The program is int class;. The proof:

$ gcc -v
gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu9)
$ g++ -v
gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu9)
$ echo 'int class;' | tee t.c t.cc >/dev/null
$ gcc -c -pedantic -ansi -W -Wall t.c
$ g++ -c t.cc
t.cc:1: error: expected identifier before ‘;’ token
t.cc:1: error: multiple types in one declaration
t.cc:1: error: declaration does not declare anything

There is a counterexample which doesn't contain any C++ keywords. The program is int i=&i;. The code:

$ echo 'int i=&i;' | tee t.c t.cc >/dev/null
$ gcc -c -pedantic -ansi -W -Wall t.c
t.c:1: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast
$ g++ -c t.cc
t.cc:1: error: invalid conversion from ‘int*’ to ‘int’

There is a counterexample which doesn't contain any C++ keywords, and it compiles without a warning as C code. The program is char *p=(void*)0;

$ echo 'char *p=(void*)0;' | tee t.c t.cc >/dev/null
$ gcc -c -pedantic -ansi -W -Wall t.c
$ gcc -c -pedantic -std=c89 -W -Wall t.c
$ gcc -c -pedantic -std=c99 -W -Wall t.c
$ gcc -c -pedantic -std=c9x -W -Wall t.c
$ gcc -c -pedantic -std=gnu89 -W -Wall t.c
$ gcc -c -pedantic -std=gnu99 -W -Wall t.c
$ gcc -c -pedantic -std=gnu9x -W -Wall t.c
$ tcc -W -Wall -c t.c
$ 8c -c -w t.c
$ g++ -c t.cc
t.cc:1: error: invalid conversion from ‘void*’ to ‘char*’

As a bonus: there is a program source which compiles in both C and C++, but it does something different. The following example is based on the fact that sizeof('x') is 1 in C++, but it's at least 2 in C.

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){return!printf("Hello, C%s!\n", "++"+1%sizeof('x')*2);}

Another idea to make the same program source do something else in C than C++ is to take advantage of that union t (etc.) create a type named t in C++, but not in C.

#include <stdio.h>
char t; int main(){union t{int u;};
return!printf("Hello, C%s!\n", "++"+(sizeof(t)<2)*2);}

So the true statement is: C and C++ are similar languages, with a large common subset, and C++ being much larger to the common subset than C is.