How to compile and run C/C++ in a Unix console/Mac terminal?

c++ c macos console terminal
P-A picture P-A · Oct 21, 2008 · Viewed 542.5k times · Source

How can I compile/run C or C++ in Unix console or a Mac terminal?

(I know it, forget it, and relearn it again. Time to write it down.)

Answer

camh picture camh · Oct 21, 2008

If it is a simple single source program:

make foo

where the source file is foo.c or foo.cpp, etc.

You dont even need a makefile. Make has enough built-in rules to build your source file into an executable of the same name, minus extension.

Running the executable just built is the same as running any program - but you will most often need to specify the path to the executable as the shell will only search what is in $PATH to find executables, and most often that does not include the current directory (.).

So to run the built executable foo:

./foo

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