Computer Systems Org I - Prof. Grishman
For this course, we will be running
the gcc C compiler within a Unix-like environment for Windows called
Cygwin. (If you have access to a machine running Linux or another
version of Unix, you should be able to use gcc in that environment and
will not need Cygwin.)
Cygwin makes use of the Windows directory structure and provides access
to some of the Windows facilities. This makes it flexible for
you: you can learn an absolute minimum of Unix commands
(basically, enough to compile and execute C programs) and do everything
else in Windows, or learn a bit more of Unix and use more of the
capabilities of Cygwin.
You interact with Cygwin, and run programs, using a command-line
interface or "shell" (like the command prompt interface under Windows
XP, and the DOS interface under earlier versions of Windows).
Several shells are available; the default is "bash".
Basically, you run a program under the shell by typing a line of the
argument1 argument2 ...
You can quit the shell (and Cygwin) with the exit command.
Basic file utilities
The directory you see when you start Cygwin is underneath Cygwin/home
in your Windows directory system.
Listing the files in a directory: ls
Making a new directory: mkdir
Changing to that directory: cd
Copying a file: cp
Deleting a file: rm
Deleting a directory: rmdir
To compile a file with gcc: gcc
This produces an executable file named a.exe
To run this executable file: ./a.exe
Editing a file
To use the Windows notepad editor: notepad <file name>
There are lots of other editors available under Cygwin, if you choose
to download them (none are downloaded by default), including nano (the simplest), vim (the oldest), and emacs (the most elaborate).