I was chasing down why gettext wouldn't build and found CXX= : in one of its generated Makefiles, and it turns out g++ can't see <cstddef> whilst it *can* see <stddef.h>. gcc can also see <stddef.h> Can anyone tell me in what way exactly my system is misconfigured, and what I can do to make #include <cstddef> work? [On my system, /usr/local is a symlink to /home/newdisk/usr-local, hence the funny paths being visible.] berndj@localhost:/tmp$ cat /tmp/foo.cpp #include <stddef.h> int main() { } berndj@localhost:/tmp$ g++ -v /tmp/foo.cpp -o /tmp/a.out Using built-in specs. Target: i686-pc-linux-gnu Configured with: ../gcc-4.3.1/configure --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-shared --disable-static --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/local/include/c++/4.3.1 --enable-languages=c,c++,fortran,objc,treelang Thread model: posix gcc version 4.3.1 (GCC) COLLECT_GCC_OPTIONS='-v' '-o' '/tmp/a.out' '-shared-libgcc' '-mtune=generic' /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../libexec/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/cc1plus -quiet -v -iprefix /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/ -D_GNU_SOURCE /tmp/foo.cpp -quiet -dumpbase foo.cpp -mtune=generic -auxbase foo -version -o /tmp/ccpO11fe.s ignoring nonexistent directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/include" ignoring duplicate directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include" ignoring duplicate directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include-fixed" ignoring nonexistent directory "/home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-linux-gnu/include" #include "..." search starts here: #include <...> search starts here: /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include-fixed /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1 /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/i686-pc-linux-gnu /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/backward /usr/local/include /usr/include End of search list. GNU C++ (GCC) version 4.3.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) compiled by GNU C version 4.3.1, GMP version 4.2.1, MPFR version 2.2.1. GGC heuristics: --param ggc-min-expand=90 --param ggc-min-heapsize=113195 Compiler executable checksum: 43dc44fca57738655f9116114f886dc1 In file included from /tmp/foo.cpp:1: /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/cstddef:48:25: error: stddef.h: No such file or directory In file included from /tmp/foo.cpp:1: /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/cstddef:55: error: '::ptrdiff_t' has not been declared /home/newdisk/usr-local/bin/../lib/gcc/../../include/c++/4.3.1/cstddef:56: error: '::size_t' has not been declared The only [excluding those in directories for other versions & targets of GCC] <stddef.h> on my system are: /usr/include/linux/stddef.h /usr/local/lib/gcc/i686-pc-linux-gnu/4.3.1/include/stddef.h TIA