"g++" and "c++" compiler

c++ compiler-construction ubuntu g++
Tim picture Tim · Nov 11, 2009 · Viewed 34.8k times · Source

I just found on my Ubuntu, there are two different C++ compiler: /usr/bin/g++ and /usr/bin/c++. I am not familiar with the latter, but man c++ just jumps to the manpage of gcc. I wonder what is their difference as C++ compilers?

Answer

MichaelM picture MichaelM · Nov 11, 2009

This is typical Ubuntu symlink mayhem.

If you ls -l /usr/bin/c++, you will see it is actually a symbolic link. to:

/etc/alternatives/c++

Which in turn, is also a symbolic link to:

/usr/bin/g++

So, on Ubuntu systems, c++ is g++. The reasoning behind the link indirection is that there are multiple packages that could provide a c++ compiler (such as different versions of g++). You'll see this a lot on Ubuntu. For example, qmake is a link to a file in /etc/alternatives, which is (on my system) a link back to /usr/bin/qmake-qt3.

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