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cl.exe is usually located at %VCINSTALLDIR%\bin\ . VCINSTALLDIR environment variable is not set by default, but it is being set when you open Visual Studio's Native Tools Command Prompt.
If you see the error "The term 'cl.exe' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program.", this usually means you are running VS Code outside of a Developer Command Prompt for Visual Studio and VS Code doesn't know the path to the cl.exe compiler.
cl.exe is a tool that controls the Microsoft C++ (MSVC) C and C++ compilers and linker. cl.exe can be run only on operating systems that support Microsoft Visual Studio for Windows. You can start this tool only from a Visual Studio developer command prompt.
You can build C and C++ applications on the command line by using tools that are included in Visual Studio. The Microsoft C++ (MSVC) compiler toolset is also downloadable as a standalone package. You don't need to install the Visual Studio IDE if you don't plan to use it.
Visual Studio 2015 doesn't install C++ by default. You have to rerun the setup, select Modify and then check Programming Language -> C++
In Visual Studio 2019 you can find cl.exe inside
32-BIT : C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.20.27508\bin\Hostx86\x86
64-BIT : C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC\14.20.27508\bin\Hostx64\x64
Before trying to compile either run vcvars32 for 32-Bit compilation or vcvars64 for 64-Bit.
32-BIT : "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars32.bat"
64-BIT : "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Auxiliary\Build\vcvars64.bat"
If you can't find the file or the directory, try going to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Community\VC\Tools\MSVC and see if you can find a folder with a version number. If you can't, then you probably haven't installed C++ through the Visual Studio Installation yet.
For me that have Visual Studio 2015 this works:
Search this in the start menu: Developer Command Prompt for VS2015 and run the program in the search result.
You can now execute your command in it, for example: cl /?
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