19.8. Inherently Nonportable Features
To support low-level programming, C++ defines some features that are inherently nonportable. A nonportable feature is one that is machine specific. Programs that use nonportable features often require reprogramming when they are moved from one machine to another. The fact that the sizes of the arithmetic types vary across machines (§ 2.1.1, p. 32) is one such nonportable feature that we have already used.
In this section we’ll cover two additional nonportable features that C++ inherits from C: bit-fields and the volatile qualifier. We’ll also cover linkage directives, which is a nonportable feature that C++ adds to those that it inherits from C.
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