GNU C Compiler

Computer History Notes - Herong's Tutorial Notes

∟1972 - C Language Developed by Dennis Ritchie

∟GNU C Compiler

This section provides a quick introduction of GNU C Compiler developed by the GNU Project. It offers a single command, gcc, to preprocess, compile, assembly and link C programs as one step.

What Is GCC? GCC originally stood for "GNU C Compiler". But now it stands for "GNU Compiler Collection". GCC now contains compilers for C, C++, Fortran, Java and Ada.

GCC offers a single command, gcc, to preprocess, compile, assembly and link C programs as one step. Here is an example on a Linux system:

\home\herong>cat hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
main() {
   printf("Hello world!\n");
}

\home\herong>gcc hello.c -o hello

\home\herong>hello
Hello world!

If you want to break the "gcc" command into multiple steps of preprocessing, compilation, assembling and linking, you can use different options as shown in the example below:

\home\herong>gcc -E hello.c -o hello.i

\home\herong>gcc -S hello.i -o hello.s

\home\herong>gcc -c hello.s -o hello.o

\home\herong>gcc hello.o -o hello

\home\herong>hello
Hello world!