This is an unofficial snapshot of the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC22 WG21 Core Issues List revision 115d. See http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/ for the official list.

2024-10-26


809. Deprecation of the register keyword

Section: 9.2.2  [dcl.stc]     Status: CD2     Submitter: UK     Date: 3 March, 2009

N2800 comment UK 86

[Voted into WP at October, 2009 meeting.]

The register keyword serves very little function, offering no more than a hint that a note says is typically ignored. It should be deprecated in this version of the standard, freeing the reserved name up for use in a future standard, much like auto has been re-used this time around for being similarly useless.

Notes from the March, 2009 meeting:

The consensus of the CWG was in favor of deprecating register.

Proposed resolution (September, 2009):

  1. Change 9.2.2 [dcl.stc] paragraph 3 as follows:

  2. A register specifier is a hint to the implementation that the object so declared will be heavily used. [Note: the hint can be ignored and in most implementations it will be ignored if the address of the object is taken. This use is deprecated (see [depr.register]).end note]
  3. Add a new section following _N3000_.D.4 [depr.string]:

  4. register keyword [depr.register]

    The use of the register keyword as a storage-class-specifier is deprecated (see 9.2.2 [dcl.stc]).