C is an imperative (procedural) language. All the code has to be inside a function and must be compiled to output an executable file. Created by Dennis Ritchie and Kenny Thompson (K & R), is one of the most used programming languages in the world.

GCC is a compilator that recibes a program and generates a binary program in the machine language . GCC stands for GNU’s not Unix Compiler Collection.

The syntaxis goes: gcc [option | file]… i.e gcc file_name.c compiles and generates and executble files a.out

Compilation process takes 4 steps showed above in the graphic. To go from a programm written by a human to an executable file type gcc main.c and the source code is going to transform within four steps:

1. Preprocessing

This stage of the compilation, the preprocessor interpret preprocessor directives. These directives are statements that begin with “#define” (i.e. #include).

gcc -E $CFILE

2. Compiling

Allows for the preprocessed code to be translated to assembly instructions in the machine.

gcc -S $CFILE

3. Assembling

Is where the machine language instructions get created and then the object file is generated. Basically, the compiler is converting the syntax into machine level code.

gcc -c $CFILE

4. Linking

To link C functions of the code, like printf, that are already assambled and comipled in libraries. its important to takethe binary code form the fonctions to the executable.

gcc -o $CFILE

That happens when you type gcc main.c

Thank you and keep coding