C on Linux

[r4rahul82]

Hi,
I am a newbie to using linux. I hav experience using C and C++ on windows. I want to know is it any different on linux coz we need to compile from command line and also can i get some help/tutorials about using c on linux and debuggers

Sincerely
Rahul

[RobSeace]

Any different in what way? Lots of little things are different on
any given OS... But, the basics are all pretty much the same...
If you can handle one Unix platform, you can generally handle
any of them... If you're talking about available library functions
and such, all of the standard POSIX stuff should be available, as
well as lots of other less standard things... As for help on using
GCC, do "info gcc" at a command line... (As a side note: does
anyone other than me absolutely despise GNU's stupid "info"
system?? I can't stand it! I wish they'd use normal fucking man
pages, like everyone else on the planet! </rant> ;-)) Or, go to
http://gcc.gnu.org/... For GDB, the same "info gdb"
should help, or go to http://www.gnu.org/manual/gdb-5.1.1/gdb.html...

[i3839]

man gcc works for me, takes a century to load, but after that it's at least clear what some advantages of the info system are...

In short: The info system is a nightmare, but huge manpages are hell.

(Of course they can split that man page up into multiple smaller ones, but that's another matter)

[RobSeace]

Hmmm, yeah, it looks like the GCC man page does have some
useful info in it... For some reason, I thought it was one of those
which simply said basically "This man page is obsolete: use the
info system now!"... I've seen those a lot with GNU stuff... Maybe
it was on an older system, and they've since gone back to keeping
the man page updated? *shrug* But, it's still not as informative as
the "info" page, anyway... (Once you manage to find your way
through the damn thing, anyway...) They would've been much
better off just making the "info system" work via HTML pages,
and use something simple like lynx for text-based viewing, or you
could use a GUI browser instead, if you liked... If they had to have
their separate "do things differently from the rest of the world, just
because we're GNU, and we want to!" system, in the first place,
that is... ;-) But, yeah, I think the BEST solution would be multiple
reasonable sized man pages... Eg: "man gcc_debug" brings up
full info on all the debugging options, "man gcc_extensions" brings
up info on all their extensions beyond normal C, etc... Or, simply
left the extensive full documentation as separately packaged stuff
under "/usr/share/docs/" or something, and people that really
needed it could seek it out... (I'd rather hunt around there, then
read through text files with "less", or fire up a browser on HTML
files, than deal with their wacky info system... ;-) I mean, what the
hell IS that thing, anyway??)

[i3839]

Yes, they should use html, they want the same functionality, so no reason to make their own system. First thing I do after typing 'info gcc' is scrolling down to the "Option Index" and press enter.

I found interesting info a couple of times, but of course can't find it back. But that's the fun of the info system: It's a labyrinth.