WTF!!! Compile/Link & Run, how hard can it be?

[Stickan]

Just for fun I decided to port a very minimal Windows/MS shell application of mine to Linux (shell only installation).

I ran aptitude and after a while I had g++-3.4 installed.
I copied my single cpp file to my home dir and ran:
# g++-3.4 Myfile.cpp
and after a cleaning up a few issues I suddenly got an a.out.

Happy as ever I now typed
# a.out
but then get a "command not found". Huh, what's this?
Typing
# a TAB, nothing happens
# a. TAB, nothing happens.

Seems like system doesn't accept my file as an executable even though file flags are set to x. Where did I go wrong? Shouldn't an executable be runnable this way?

[towy71]

chmod x a.out

[Stickan]

x flag is already set for ogu by compiler/linker.

[rudie_rage]

try ./a.out
when you enter just a.out, it searches through /bin and /sbin and the like looking for the file. typing the ./ is like saying 'hey, look for the program in the directory im in'

PS: if you dont want the output of the compiler to save to a.out, you can try specifying the desired filename with the -o (lowercase letter o)

ex gcc -o myprogram myprogram.cpp

[Stickan]

Ah, thanks!

Should have thought of that, still to used to how windows apply search paths I guess...

The code snippet works like a charm so now I just have to polish it a bit and figure out how to execute it periodically (it's for retreiving data once a day from a web server). Maybe it would have been easier to do this with a script language but I'm to used to C...