C is a general-purpose programming language, best suited for system programming. It is developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Lab to write utility programs for Unix Operating System. Later, the Unix kernel itself was implemented in C Language. Low-level access to memory, simple keywords, fast and efficient execution features, made C one of the most used programming languages.
Learning a C is a must if you are starting your career as a programmer. You only need a text editor to write a C Program and GCC or Clang compiler to compile the program.
In this article, we will see how to write and compile C Program.
Compile and Run C Program in Linux
GCC compiler is part of the GNU Compiler Collection that includes front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for these languages (libstdc++,…). It was originally written as the compiler for the GNU operating system.
1. Install GCC Compiler
GCC is part of the build-essential package for Ubuntu/Debian-based Distros and the Development Tools package for Fedora/Centos/Rehat-based Distros. It should already be available. If that is not the case, first you need to install GCC.
Use the below command to install the build-essential package on Ubuntu/Debian-based distros and
sudo apt-get install build-essential
Development Tools on Fedora/Centos/Rehat-based distros.
yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'
Use the below command to verify the installation,
~$ gcc -v
~$ whereis gcc gcc: /usr/bin/gcc /usr/lib/gcc /usr/share/man/man1/gcc.1.gz
~$ which gcc /usr/bin/gcc
2. Write C Program
Any text editor like vi, nano, or even VIM is fine to write a C program. Here, I am going to create a classic hello world program using a nano editor. Open the terminal and start the editor.
nano hello-world.c
C program listing,
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("/n Hello World ");
return 0;
}
Where,
- studio.h – standard input output header file
- printf – command to print a message
3. Compile C Program with GCC Compiler
Next, compile the program using the GCC compiler. The syntax is gcc <file name> -o <output file>. In our case
gcc hello-world.c -o hello-world
This generates a hello-world binary file.
4. Run C Program
Now, just Type ./<output name> to run the program.
~$ ./hello-world
The output of the program ( shown below),
Summary
A text editor and GCC compiler are the basic tools you need to start writing and compiling c programs. Go ahead and start learning c.
I hope this small article was helpful. Please share and subscribe.
