Somehow, each time I want to know the version of cl1 I just cannot remember the correct name for the macro to use. This is _MSC_VER. This is set to a large number such as 1300. This number represents the compile version. Not the version of the IDE that started later and seems to have been moving slower too. So, at time of writing, the current IDE is version 8.0, but the corresponding compiler is 1400.

Sample code one can use to get the exact Compiler Version:

// In a Visual Studio Console compile with:
//     cl ver.c
main()
{
	printf("%d\n",_MSC_VER);
}

Note that you can get a free version of Visual Studio (without all the features available) from Microsoft. It is called Visual Studio Express:

http://www.microsoft.com/express

• 1. In case you did not know, cl is the C/C++ compiler.