Compiling and Executing C++ programs in Linux

GNU C++ Compiler (g++) is a compiler in Linux which is used to compile C++ programs.

It compiles both files with extension .c and .cpp as C++ files.

Installing g++ compiler

By default, g++ is provided with most of the Linux distributions.

Details of installed g++ compiler by command

g++ –version

If g++ is not installed on your system; then it can be installed by writing the following commands

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt install g++

Compiling C++ program

compile a C++ program using command

sudo g++ source-file.cpp

The above command will generate an executable file a.out.

-o option to specify the output file name for the executable.

sudo g++ source-file.cpp -o executable-file

Running a C++ program

Execute the created executable file by using the following command:

./executable-file

Activity 1

Write a simple C++ program that displays a Hello World message and the then compile and execute this program using the above commands.

To write the program, we use the gedit text editor. The source code file is saved with .cpp extension. (gedit hello.cpp) ,(g++ hello.cpp –o hello)
Open the gedit editor and pass the name of the file (hello.cpp) to be created(./hello)

Command-line Arguments

Command line argument is a parameter supplied to the program when it is invoked.
It is mostly used when you need to control your program from outside.
Command line arguments are passed to the main () method.

Passing command-line arguments to a C++ program

To pass command line arguments, we typically define main () with two arguments:
First argument counts the number of arguments on the command line
Second argument is a pointer array which holds pointers of type char which points to the arguments passed to the program.

The syntax to define the main method is

int main (int argc, char *argv[])

Here, argc variable will hold the number of arguments pass to the program while the argv will contain pointers to those variables.

argv[0] holds the name of the program while argv[1] to argv[argc] hold the arguments.
Command-line arguments are given after the name of the program in command-line shell of Operating Systems.
Each argument separated by a space.

If a space is included in the argument, then it is written in “”.

Activity 2

Open gedit to write c++ program.

Compile the c++ program using g++ compiler.

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Compiling and Executing C++ programs in Linux

Installing g++ compiler

Running a C++ program

Passing command-line arguments to a C++ program

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