[ For more information about Unix commands, see http://www.cs.kzoo.edu/CSShared/IntroUnix/basicUnixCmds.html. For links to information about vi, see http://www.cs.kzoo.edu/CSShared/IntroUnix/BashVi.html. ]

First, you can double-check that you have the GNU C Compiler and Make on your machine (which you should):

    whereis gcc
    whereis make

Each of these will either respond with one or more full file pathnames (e.g., /usr/bin/gcc) or with an error that it cannot be found. You should have both.

At least until you get comfortable with make, you will probably want to put each project in its own directory. If you have started to create C source files all in one directory (or if you haven't started yet), change to the directory under which you want to create a new directory and then make the directory:

    cd courseFiles/cs230
    mkdir pp1a
    mv helloworld.c pp1a   (if you already created helloworld.c in cs230)

So, let's say you have a directory called pp1a and you have a simple program in that directory that "fits" in a single C source file, e.g., helloworld.c. Go into that directory, and run the gcc command.

    cd pp1a
    vi helloworld.c       if it needs any editing
    gcc helloworld.c      compiles file, creates a.out
    a.out                 runs a.out

The gcc command will compile helloworld.c and create an executable file. By default, gcc will create a file called a.out (the name might be something different on a windows machine, like a.exe). You can run it just by typing that name, as in the example above. (If this doesn't work, try typing ./a.out, which means "run a.out in the current directory. (Unix uses . to refer to the current directory and .. to refer to the directory above.))

If you want to create a more meaningful executable name (definitely a good idea!), use the -o option on the gcc command:

    gcc -o hello helloworld.c     compiles file, creates hello executable
    hello                         runs hello executable
      OR ./hello

If you have a program that is spread across several files, e.g., file1.c, file2.c, and sharedHeader.h, then gcc will compile them to individual machine code files and then link them together to a single executable:

    gcc -o myProg file1.c file2.c     NOTE: don't list the .h file
    myProg                            runs myProg
      OR ./myProg

You don't list the header file(s) in the command line because the content of a header file is already read into the C source files that include it.

If you have a different directory for each project, so all the files in the current directory are part of the current project, then you can use *.c to refer to all the .c files in the current directory:

    gcc -o myProg *.c
    myProg