One of the first issues I encountered when learning C++ was that the itoa function was supported on some compilers but was not actually defined in the ANSI-C standard (and therefore was generally considered bad practice to use).
I have seen multiple solutions such as using stringstream or snprintf, which have always felt very roundabout to me, and finally in C++11 there is std::to_string which feels much cleaner from a language perspective.
But why did it take so long for a more direct method to be added? I have had trouble finding anything beyond some discussions of efficiency and lack of desire to change the standard without good reason. Was anything ever officially stated on why this was not included or why they finally decided to add it in C++11? Has there been any discussion of adding this to a future revision of C?