C Environment Setup

This section describes  how to set  up your system environment before you start doing your
programming using C language.
Before you start doing programming using C programming language, you need the following
two softwares available on your computer, (a) Text Editor and (b) The C Compiler.

Text Editor :- 

This will be used to type your program. Examples of few editors include Windows Notepad,
OS Edit command, Brief, Epsilon, EMACS, and vim or vi.
Name  and  version  of  text  editor  can  vary  on  different  operating  systems.  For  example,
Notepad will be used on Windows, and vim or vi can be used on windows as well as Linux or
UNIX.
The  files  you  create  with  your  editor  are  called  source  files  and  contain  program  source
code. The source files for C programs are typically named with the extension “.c”.
Before  starting  your  programming,  make  sure  you  have  one  text  editor  in  place  and  you
have enough experience to write a computer program, save it in a file, compile it and finally
execute it.

The C Compiler :- 

The  source  code  written  in  source  file  is  the  human  readable  source  for  your  program.  It
needs  to  be  "compiled",  to  turn  into  machine  language  so  that  your  CPU  can  actually
execute the program as per instructions given.
This  C  programming  language  compiler  will  be  used  to  compile  your  source  code  into  final
executable  program.  I  assume  you  have  basic  knowledge  about  a  programming  language
compiler.
Most frequently used and free available compiler is GNU C/C++ compiler, otherwise you can
have compilers either from HP or Solaris if you have respective Operating Systems.
Following  section  guides  you  on  how  to  install  GNU  C/C++  compiler  on  various  OS.  I'm
mentioning  C/C++  together  because  GNU  gcc  compiler  works  for  both  C  and  C++
programming languages.

Installation on  UNIX/Linux  :-

If  you  are  using Linux  or  UNIX, then  check  whether  GCC  is  installed  on  your  system  by
entering the following command from the command line:

                                    $ gcc -v

If  you  have  GNU  compiler  installed  on  your  machine,  then  it  should  print  a  message
something as follows:
                                    Using built-in specs.
                                    Target: i386-redhat-linux
                                    Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr .......
                                    Thread model: posix
                                    gcc version 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)

If  GCC  is  not  installed,  then  you  will  have  to  install  it  yourself  using  the  detailed
instructions available athttp://gcc.gnu.org/install/
This  tutorial  has  been  written  based  on  Linux  and  all  the  given  examples  have  been
compiled on Cent OS flavor of Linux system.

Installation on Mac OS :-

If you use Mac OS X, the easiest way to obtain GCC is to download the Xcode development
environment from Apple's web site and follow the simple installation instructions. Once you
have Xcode setup, you will be able to use GNU compiler for C/C++.
Xcode is currently available at developer.apple.com/technologies/tools/.

Installation on Windows :-

To install GCC at Windows you  need to install MinGW.  To install MinGW, go to the MinGW
homepage,  www.mingw.org,  and  follow  the  link  to  the  MinGW  download  page.  Download
the  latest  version  of  the  MinGW  installation  program,  which  should  be  named  MinGW-<version>.exe.
While  installing  MinWG,  at  a  minimum,  you  must  install  gcc-core,  gcc-g++,  binutils,  and
the MinGW runtime, but you may wish to install more.
Add the bin subdirectory of your MinGW installation to your PATH environment variable,  so
that you can specify these tools on the command line by their simple names.
When the installation is complete, you will be able to run gcc, g++, ar, ranlib, dlltool, and
several other GNU tools from the Windows command line.