------- Comment #2 from vincent at vinc17 dot org 2009-06-15 02:08 ------- This may be true for standard headers, but system directories don't contain only standard headers: in practice, they generally also contain additional libraries. And for instance, a -I/usr/include can be useful to override headers/libraries installed in /usr/local/{include,lib}.
Then perhaps gcc (and POSIX) should make a difference between standard headers and other headers. -- http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=40442