I haven't been following this thread in depth, but if you have to change your code to work on a new compiler, it's buggy code. Not only that, you now have two points in your code to maintain, making your code harder to maintain. Furthermore, nearly everyone in this thread has said your idea isn't guaranteed to work by the standard, so why are you arguing? I don't have a copy of the standard, but I've been around these forums long enough to know that the people here aren't lying to you about these things.