Fork in GCC

[sukhdeep]

Can anyone explain,how gcc works. I am totally confused.

Thanks.

[hazel]

I'm not sure precisely what your problem is, but gcc basically does a triple pass over your code.

The first pass is carried out by a preprocessor which does global edits: comments are removed, header files inserted, named constants replaced by their values, etc.

The second pass, carried out by gcc itself, is the compilation proper: your code is replaced by object (machine) code.

The third pass is the linking, carried out by a program called ld: the object code modules are linked to each other (if there is more than one) and to the C library and any other libraries that you have invoked.

Result: One executable file, ready to run.