While there are many ways to execute a C program in Linux, using the terminal is the easiest of all, even for beginners.
It may seem scary, but it is really not. To run C programs in Ubuntu, you need to install the compiler first.
In this guide, you will learn to:
- Install GCC compiler (to compile the program)
- Execute the C program
Let's C (yeah! I am funny).
Installing the compiler - gcc
The GCC compiler used to compile C-programs into executable files is available in the official repositories of apt. Installing gcc in Ubuntu is fairly simple.
First, update the repositories:
sudo apt update
Then install GCC via:
sudo apt install gcc
clang
package rather than gcc
alone. It includes all other compiling tools too.Executing a C program in Ubuntu
Once you are ready with the compiler, you can write programs and compile and execute them.
You specify the input C file name and an output name (usually recommended to keep the same name as the program filename but without the .c extension).
gcc <filename>.c -o <filename>
The generated output file is executable and you can run this file to actually run your program.
./filename
Example
Open any text editor and write a simple C program.
For example, here, I used Nano editor to edit the file in command line and wrote a C program that prints the value of sin30
: Â
Save the file with a desired name and with a .c extension.
To compile this program, all you have to do is execute the GCC compiler in the following manner:
gcc c-program.c -o c-program
If your code is correct, Â it won't show any errors, and you will be given an executable file for your program.
You can always use the ls command to check the file contents of the directory:
ls
Now, all there's left is to execute the file:
./c-program
To C or not to C ...
If there's an error in the C program file, then it will not be compiled, obviously. Also, the error(s) are displayed as shown below.
In my case, the error was in the first line where I named the header file stdio
incorrectly. Which was supposed to be named as stdio.h
.
Sure, you can have one or more errors which will be reflected by the compiler.
On a similar note, how about learning about running Python programs in Ubuntu?
These are the simple steps to compile C programs in Ubuntu. Leave a comment if there's any doubt.