How to make a linux command-line program work in windows?

Question

I'm a beginner with programming, and I've been doing work in C/C++ in Ubuntu. When I tell something to cin/cout/cerr or printf/scanf or take arguments from the command line, this all happens from the linux terminal in Ubuntu.

Now if I want to run these same programs (very simple programs, beginner-level) and run them in Windows, how do I run them from the Windows command line? A previous course I've taken had us download cygwin to simulate the linux command line in windows, but what if I want to just run the program from the ordinary windows command line? Is that possible, and does it require modification of the software?

Answer 1

You can cross-compile the program for Windows from linux.

On Ubuntu, process is basically this:

sudo apt-get install wine mingw32 mingw32-binutils mingw32-runtime

...

i586-mingw32msvc-g++ -o myProgram.exe myProgram.cpp

Easy, right? Google for "ubuntu cross-compile windows," there's a ton of information out there.

Answer 2

It's exactly the same. You run cmd and write the command (almost) exactly as you would in Linux.

For example, if you build your program to program, you would run it in Linux like this:

./program --option1 -o2 file1 file2

And in Windows, first you have to make the output have a .exe suffix and then in cmd you would write:

program.exe --option1 -o2 file1 file2

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Basically saying, cmd is Windows' terminal. It's nowhere near as good as the Linux terminal, but that would be all you get without installing additional software.

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cin/cout/cerr and printf/scanf/fprintf(stderr, ...) use the standard C preopened files stdin, stdout and stderr which are defined both in Linux and Windows. Once you run the application from Windows' terminal (cmd), you see the input/output exactly as you would in the Linux terminal. I/O redirection is also very similar.