How do you try out small/simple C or C++ source codes?

Question

It is very easy on Linux to fire-up vi and write a 100-200 lines of code, compile and see the results: ie. Trying small simple examples of C/C++ code.

On windows however, I like Visual Studio but to use it you have create a new solution then a project which then creates a new folder, generates very large PDB and caching files and a small example of 100-200 LOC becomes a 20Mb large project(?!) after compilation.

So the question is how do you write this kind of small codes on Windows? Possibly Cygwin or Dev-C++ (which is not active since 2004?).

Answer 1

You can compile from the command line using cl.exe. See the MSDN article How to: Compile a Native C++ Program from the Command Line for detailed instructions.

Answer 2

When you installed Visual Studio it created an entry in your programs named something like "Visual Studio Command Prompt" (maybe in a group "Visual Studio Tools").

Execute that Command Prompt (it sets up some environment variables needed for the command line compiler) and use cl, the command line compiler.

> cl /?
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.  All rights reserved.

                         C/C++ COMPILER OPTIONS


                              -OPTIMIZATION-

/O1 minimize space                      /O2 maximize speed
/Ob<n> inline expansion (default n=0)   /Od disable optimizations (default)
/Og enable global optimization          /Oi[-] enable intrinsic functions
...

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Edit -- copy from another answer :)

Microsoft Documentation: VS2005, VS2008

Answer 3

For the simplest examples codepad may be an option.