Practical C Programming - Chapter 2

Chapter 2. Basics of Program Writing

Basics of GCC compiler

gcc -g -Wall -ohello hello.c

• The -g option enables debugging.
• The switch -Wall turns on the warnings.
• The switch -ohelllo tells the compiler that the program is to be called hello.

gcc -g -Wall -ansi -pedantic -ohello hello.c

• The switch -ansi turns off features of GNU C that are incompatible with ANSI C.
• The -pedantic switch causes the compiler to issue a warning for any non-ANSI feature it encounters.

Getting Help on Unix

Most Unix systems have an online document system called the manpages. To get information about a particular subject, use the following command:

man subject

For example, to find out about the classes defined in the printf function, you would type:

man printf

The command also has a keyword search mode:

man -k keyword

To determine the name of manpage with the word “output” in its title, use the command:

man -k output