Terminal & C Programs

[Conrad11]

Hi there,

When I compile a program with C why do I have to execute with the command "./cprogram" instead of just "cprogram" to run it?

I am currently in the directory of "cprogram".

Is there anyway to change it so that it executse with just "cprogram"?

Thanks.

 

[tntcoder]

It's just the way Linux shells work.

When you execute "cprogram" the shell searches through a list of predefined directories for a binary of that name, it wont search current directories.

The predefined directory list to search is stored in the environmental variable PATH. You can see this list by running "echo $PATH". And you can add your programming directory to this variable if you want, doing so will allow for "cprogram" to execute correctly.

Add directory as follows:

PATH=$PATH:/path/to/your/code
export PATH

To make this change persistent, add it to ~/.bash_profile

 

[zpos]

As a security measure, the current directory "." is precluded from the path. This is to prevent someone from disguising a program as a system command. Imagine you ran "ls" thinking it was from /usr/bin but in actual fact it ran from the default directory.

But, this is overkill if you're running as a single user.

 

[Spyhop]

To save time you could just make an alias to compile and execute (if the compiler succeeds) in a oner, e.g.

$ alias kwik='clang prog.c -o prog && ./prog'
$ kwik
$ kwik
$ kwik