Why can't we use <stdint.h> definitions?

[email protected] (Karl Williamson)
Newsgroups perl.perl5.porters
Message-ID <[email protected]> 
Advice in perlhacktips says:

Use C<PERL_INT_FAST8_T> etc as defined in F<handy.h>

But why is that?  'int_fast8_t' is easier to read and occupies less 
space, which is why I would prefer to use it.

Are there really C99 compilers that don't comply with recognizing these?
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.