How to Run C Programs in Linux? - 3 Step Quick Guide

In this tutorial, we will learn how we can run C programs in Linux. C language was developed at Bell Laboratories in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie. It is still very popular for system-level programming. C language is the mother language of many other languages.

In fact, Unix is one of the first operating system kernels that is implemented using C.

Table of Contents

Steps to Run C Programs in Linux

To run a C program in Linux terminal you need to first install a compiler for C. Let’s go over it step by step.

1. Install build-essential package on your Linux System

To install the essential packages the steps are as follows Run a sudo apt update as shown below

sudo apt update

To install the essential packages in your system run the command :

sudo apt install build-essential

This command will install all the necessary packages for running a C program.

2. Write a C program to test

There are multiple options when it comes to writing a C program. You can use a GUI code editor to write or you can use the terminal. Even when writing the code on the terminal, there are multiple options available. In this tutorial, we will create a C program using the Vim editor. To open a file in vim editor use the command:

vim c_code.c

The code used in the example is as follows:

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
   printf("Linux For Devices!");
   return 0;
}

To save and quit vim type:

:wq [Enter]

To verify the contents of the file use cat command:

cat c_code.c

3. Compiling and Running

To compile the C program we will use GCC compiler. Check the version of your GCC compiler use the command:

gcc --version

To compile the C program use the following command:

 gcc c_code.c -o c_code

If there is no error then the terminal will give no output. If there is an error, the terminal will display it. To run the C program use the command:

./c_code

C Program Output

Terminal gives the output shown above. To save the output in a file use the command:

./c_code > c_code_output.txt

This will save the output in the file. To view the file use cat command:

cat c_code_output.txt

Conclusion

Here we’ve seen how we can run C programs in Linux. Now you can use C language to create useful programs and then run those programs easily in Linux.