How to compile and run C/C++ in a Unix console/Mac terminal?

Question

How can I compile/run C or C++ code in a Unix console or a Mac terminal?

Answer 1

If it is a simple single-source program,

make foo

where the source file is foo.c, foo.cpp, etc., you don’t even need a makefile. Make has enough built-in rules to build your source file into an executable of the same name, minus the extension.

Running the executable just built is the same as running any program - but you will most often need to specify the path to the executable as the shell will only search what is in $PATH to find executables, and most often that does not include the current directory (.).

So to run the built executable foo:

./foo

Answer 2

gcc main.cpp -o main.out
./main.out