Here are ten interesting patterns and tricks I sometime use in my C code, some are well known, some not so much. I am sure all of them work with clang and gcc (after fixing the evetual typos). I didn’t try with MSVC, but except for no 1 and 5, I think it should also work.

[edit]: Here is a link to the hacker news thread.

[edit]: Maybe the title is a bit misleading, this is not strictly about C99. Some items in the list are valid C89, and some others would not compile with -std=c99 -pedantic, and there are also gnu extensions. But pragmatically, all of those will compile with recent gcc and clang compiler.

0. Ternary operator without middle operand (gnu extension)

// Instead of
x = x ? x : 10;

// We can use the shorter form:
x = x ?: 10;

// Advantage: if x is an expression it
// will be evaluated only once.

1. Unamed struct for smart vector type.

typedef union {
    struct { float x, y, z; };
    struct { vec2_t xy; };
    struct { float x_; vec2_t yz; };
    float v[3];
} vec3_t;
#define VEC3(x, y, z) { {x, y, z} }

...

vec3_t vec = VEC3(1, 2, 3);
// We can access the attributes in different ways.
float  x    = vec.x;
vec2_t xy   = vec.xy;
float  z    = vec.v[2];

2. IS_DEFINED macro

// As used in the linux kernel.
// A macro that expands to 1 if a preprocessor value
// was defined to 1, and 0 if it was not defined or
// defined to an other value.

#define IS_DEFINED(macro) IS_DEFINED_(macro)
#define MACROTEST_1 ,
#define IS_DEFINED_(value) IS_DEFINED__(MACROTEST_##value)
#define IS_DEFINED__(comma) IS_DEFINED___(comma 1, 0)
#define IS_DEFINED___(_, v, ...) v

// Can be used in preprocessor macros:
#if IS_DEFINED(SOMETHING)
    ...
#endif

// Or even directly in the code.
// Same effect but looks better.
if (IS_DEFINED(SOMETHING)) {
    ...
}

3. Convenience macro for OpenGL code

// Not really special, but so useful I thought
// I'll put it here.  Can also be used with other
// libraries (OpenAL, OpenSLES, ...)
#ifdef DEBUG
#  define GL(line) do {                      \
       line;                                 \
       assert(glGetError() == GL_NO_ERROR);  \
   } while(0)
#else
#  define GL(line) line
#endif

// Put GL around all your opengl calls:
GL(glClear(GL_COLORS_MASK));
GL(pos_loc = glGetAttribLocation(prog, "pos"));

4. Array size macro

// Is there any C project that does not use it?
#define ARRAY_SIZE(x) (sizeof(x) / sizeof((x)[0]))

// Can be used like this:
int a[] = {0, 4, 5, 6};
int n = ARRAY_SIZE(a); // n = 4

// Warning: does not work with array arguments to functions:
int func(int a[]) {
    int nb = ARRAY_SIZE(a); // Would not work!
}

5. Safe min macro (uses a gnu extension)

#define min(a, b) ({ \
      __typeof__ (a) _a = (a); \
      __typeof__ (b) _b = (b); \
      _a < _b ? _a : _b; \
})

6. Passing pointer to unnamed variables to function.

// A func that expects a pointer to three int values.
void func(const int *arg);

// Instead of using a local variable.
int tmp[] = {10, 20, 30};
func(tmp);

// We can write.
func( (const int[]){10, 20, 30} )

// Can be useful with a helper macro.
#define VEC(...) ((const int[]){__VA_ARGS__})
func(VEC(10, 20, 30));

// (Also works with struct or any other type).

7. Named initializer, with default values

// I use this one all the time when writing
// video game.  One of the reason why I
// don't like to use C++.

// Let say we have this struct
struct obj {
    const char *name;
    float pos[2];
    float color[4];
};

// We can write a macro like this one
#define OBJ(_name, ...)             \
    (struct obj) {                  \
        .name = _name,              \
        .color = {1, 1, 1, 1},      \
        __VA_ARGS__                 \
    };

// Now we can use the macro to create new objects.
// This one with color defaulted to {1, 1, 1, 1}.
struct obj o1 = OBJ("o1", .pos = {0, 10});
// This one with pos defaulted to {0, 0}.
struct obj o2 = OBJ("o2", .color = {1, 0, 0, 1});

8. X macros

// Define this once.
#define SPRITES \
    X(PLAYER,   "atlas_0.png", {0, 0, 128, 128})    \
    X(ENEMY0,   "atlas_0.png", {128, 0, 128, 128})  \
    X(ENEMY1,   "atlas_2.png", {0, 0, 64, 64})      \
    ...

// Create an enum with all the sprites.
emum {
    #define X(n, ...) SPR_##n,
    SPRITES
    #undef X
}

// Create an array with all the sprites values.
struct {
    const char *atlas;
    int rect[4];
} sprites[] = {
    #define X(n, a, r) [SPR_##n] = {a, r},
    SPRITES
    #undef X
};

// Many other possibilities...

9. State machine helper using __LINE__

// This is a great trick.
// Instead of:

int iter(int state) {
    switch (state) {
    case 0:
        printf("step 0\n");
        return 1;
    case 1:
        printf("step 1\n");
        return 2;
    case 2:
        printf("step 2\n");
        return 3;
    case 3:
        return -1;
    }
}

// We can define:
#define START switch(state) { case 0:
#define END return -1; }
#define YIELD return __LINE__; case __LINE__:;

// And now the function can be written
int iter(int state) {
    START
    printf("step 0\n");
    YIELD
    printf("step 1\n");
    YIELD
    printf("step 2\n");
    END
}

// It is possible to go totally wild with
// this one.