Your compiler may have its own built-in text editor, or you may be using a commercial text editor or word processor that can produce text f...
Your compiler may have its own built-in text editor, or you may be using a commercial text editor or word processor that can produce text files. The important thing is that whatever you write your program in, it must save simple, plain-text files, with no word processing commands embedded in the text. Examples of safe editors include Windows Notepad, the DOS Edit command, Brief, Epsilon, EMACS, and vi. Many commercial word processors, such as WordPerfect, Word, and dozens of others, also offer a method for saving simple text files.
The files you create with your editor are called source files, and for C++ they typically are named with the extension .CPP, .CP, or .C. In this book, we'll name all the source code files with the .CPP extension, but check your compiler for what it needs.
NOTE: Most C++ compilers don't care what extension you give your source code, but if you don't specify otherwise, many will use .CPP by default. DO use a simple text editor to create your source code, or use the built-in editor that comes with your compiler. DON'T use a word processor that saves special formatting characters. If you do use a word processor, save the file as ASCII text. DO save your files with the .C, .CP, or .CPP extension. DO check your documentation for specifics about your compiler and linker to ensure that you know how to compile and link your programs.
Compiling the Source Code
Although the source code in your file is somewhat cryptic, and anyone who doesn't know C++ will struggle to understand what it is for, it is still in what we call human-readable form. Your source code file is not a program, and it can't be executed, or run, as a program can.
To turn your source code into a program, you use a compiler. How you invoke your compiler, and how you tell it where to find your source code, will vary from compiler to compiler; check your documentation. In Borland's Turbo C++ you pick the RUN menu command or type
tc <filename>
from the command line, where <filename> is the name of your source code file (for example, test.cpp). Other compilers may do things slightly differently.
NOTE: If you compile the source code from the operating system's command line, you should type the following:
- For the Borland C++ compiler: bcc <filename>
- For the Borland C++ for Windows compiler: bcc <filename>
- For the Borland Turbo C++ compiler: tc <filename>
- For the Microsoft compilers: cl <filename>
After your source code is compiled, an object file is produced. This file is often named with the extension .OBJ. This is still not an executable program, however. To turn this into an executable program, you must run your linker.
