Understaning the basics?

[memyselfandi]

Ahh right. I was always under the impression VB was an environment and not an actual language?

I'm using XP.

Then I would suggest that you should have created a separate thread instead of adding to this one today. If you want to ask about programming then you'd probably do better creating a thread in the "HTML, Graphics and Programming" forum particularly as you are not planning to do it on Linux.

Visual Basic is a variant on the Basic language extended to allow easy development on Windows.

You may be able to use MS Visual C++ Express edition to try and write C on XP but its not really my area. link

 

[BigglesPiP]

C programming is a very common language.

Linux often has a compiler called "GCC" installed.

Put your code in a file called "whatever.c", edit and save with your favourite text editor (I like vim).

then at the terminal:

gcc whatever.c
./a.out

This will compile and run your program. If it can't compile then you will see errors (you can ignore warnings, but you shouldn't).

Try this as your 1st program.

my_1st_c_program.c:

// this is a comment, it is ignored

/* so is this
but it is multi line */

#include <stdio.h>        // use the standard I/O library, printf lives in there

int main(void) {          // main is executed 1st
printf("Hello world.\n"); // say something, "\n" means new line.
return(0);                // exit cleanly
}