Introduction to C Programming

• C was developed in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
• The American National Institute of Standards (ANSI) developed a standardized definition of the C language.

Makefile and Compilation

• Use I (lowercase L) to link libraries into the executable
• Use I (capital i) to ignore errors when executing command scripts
• make command executes the default target in the makefile called ‘Makefile’
• make clean command removes the executable using the makefile
• tar cvf.tar creates a tarfile, tar xf.tar extracts a tarfile

Input/Output

• #include is used for input/output operations
• fgets gets a string from the specified stream
• gcc is the compiler used to compile files
• Important flags: -g for debug, -Wall for printing all warnings, -o for specifying the executable file name, -lm for math library

Compiling Examples

• gcc -o hello hello.c -lm compiles and links hello.c to executable hello
• gcc hello.c -o hello -lm is an alternative way to compile and link
• gcc hello.c compiles and links to a default executable a.out

Makefile Creation

• A Makefile automates and manages the process of compiling programs
• Use vi Makefile or vim Makefile to create a Makefile
• Use # character for comments, and variable names like CC, CFLAGS, LIBS
• Use $ character before variable names in targets, prerequisites, and recipes