So this is probably a long shot, but is there any way to run a C or C++ file as a script? I tried:
#!/usr/bin/gcc main.c -o main; ./main
int main(){ return 0; }
But it says:
./main.c:1:2: error: invalid preprocessing directive #!
So this is probably a long shot, but is there any way to run a C or C++ file as a script? I tried:
#!/usr/bin/gcc main.c -o main; ./main
int main(){ return 0; }
But it says:
./main.c:1:2: error: invalid preprocessing directive #!
For C, you may have a look at tcc, the Tiny C Compiler. Running C code as a script is one of its possible uses.
Short answer:
//usr/bin/clang "$0" && exec ./a.out "$@"
int main(){
return 0;
}
The trick is that your text file must be both valid C/C++ code and shell script. Remember to exit
from the shell script before the interpreter reaches the C/C++ code, or invoke exec
magic.
Run with chmod +x main.c; ./main.c
.
A shebang like #!/usr/bin/tcc -run
isn't needed because unix-like systems will already execute the text file within the shell.
(adapted from this comment)
I used it in my C++ script:
//usr/bin/clang++ -O3 -std=c++11 "$0" && ./a.out; exit
#include <iostream>
int main() {
for (auto i: {1, 2, 3})
std::cout << i << std::endl;
return 0;
}
If your compilation line grows too much you can use the preprocessor (adapted from this answer) as this plain old C code shows:
#if 0
clang "$0" && ./a.out
rm -f ./a.out
exit
#endif
int main() {
return 0;
}
Of course you can cache the executable:
#if 0
EXEC=${0%.*}
test -x "$EXEC" || clang "$0" -o "$EXEC"
exec "$EXEC"
#endif
int main() {
return 0;
}
Now, for the truly eccentric Java developer:
/*/../bin/true
CLASS_NAME=$(basename "${0%.*}")
CLASS_PATH="$(dirname "$0")"
javac "$0" && java -cp "${CLASS_PATH}" ${CLASS_NAME}
rm -f "${CLASS_PATH}/${CLASS_NAME}.class"
exit
*/
class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
return;
}
}
D programmers simply put a shebang at the beginning of text file without breaking the syntax:
#!/usr/bin/rdmd
void main(){}
See:
$ cat /usr/local/bin/runc
#!/bin/bash
sed -n '2,$p' "$@" | gcc -o /tmp/a.out -x c++ - && /tmp/a.out
rm -f /tmp/a.out
$ cat main.c
#!/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/runc
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("hello world!\n");
return 0;
}
$ ./main.c
hello world!
The sed command takes the .c
file and strips off the hash-bang line. 2,$p
means print lines 2 to end of file; "$@"
expands to the command-line arguments to the runc script, i.e. "main.c"
.
sed's output is piped to gcc. Passing -
to gcc tells it to read from stdin, and when you do that you also have to specify the source language with -x
since it has no file name to guess from.
Since the shebang line will be passed to the compiler, and # indicates a preprocessor directive, it will choke on a #!.
What you can do is embed the makefile in the .c file (as discussed in this xkcd thread)
#if 0
make $@ -f - <<EOF
all: foo
foo.o:
cc -c -o foo.o -DFOO_C $0
bar.o:
cc -c -o bar.o -DBAR_C $0
foo: foo.o bar.o
cc -o foo foo.o bar.o
EOF
exit;
#endif
#ifdef FOO_C
#include <stdlib.h>
extern void bar();
int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
bar();
return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}
#endif
#ifdef BAR_C
void bar() {
puts("bar!");
}
#endif
The #if 0 #endif
pair surrounding the makefile ensure the preprocessor ignores that section of text, and the EOF marker marks where the make command should stop parsing input.
CINT:
CINT is an interpreter for C and C++ code. It is useful e.g. for situations where rapid development is more important than execution time. Using an interpreter the compile and link cycle is dramatically reduced facilitating rapid development. CINT makes C/C++ programming enjoyable even for part-time programmers.
You might want to checkout ryanmjacobs/c which was designed for this in mind. It acts as a wrapper around your favorite compiler.
#!/usr/bin/c
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void) {
printf("Hello World!\n");
return 0;
}
The nice thing about using c
is that you can choose what compiler you want to use, e.g.
$ export CC=clang
$ export CC=gcc
So you get all of your favorite optimizations too! Beat that tcc -run
!
You can also add compiler flags to the shebang, as long as they are terminated with the --
characters:
#!/usr/bin/c -Wall -g -lncurses --
#include <ncurses.h>
int main(void) {
initscr();
/* ... */
return 0;
}
c
also uses $CFLAGS
and $CPPFLAGS
if they are set as well.
#!/usr/bin/env sh
tail -n +$(( $LINENO + 1 )) "$0" | cc -xc - && { ./a.out "$@"; e="$?"; rm ./a.out; exit "$e"; }
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char const* argv[]) {
printf("Hello world!\n");
return 0;
}
This properly forwards the arguments and the exit code too.
Quite a short proposal would exploit:
The "#" being a comment in shell and "#if 0" disabling code.
#if 0
F="$(dirname $0)/.$(basename $0).bin"
[ ! -f $F -o $F -ot $0 ] && { c++ "$0" -o "$F" || exit 1 ; }
exec "$F" "$@"
#endif
// Here starts my C++ program :)
#include <iostream>
#include <unistd.h>
using namespace std;
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
if (argv[1])
clog << "Hello " << argv[1] << endl;
else
clog << "hello world" << endl;
}
Then you can chmod +x
your .cpp files and then ./run.cpp
.
./run.cpp Hi
a.out
, so that you can have multiple binaries in the same folder.Problems:
Variatn of John Kugelman can be written in this way:
#!/bin/bash
t=`mktemp`
sed '1,/^\/\/code/d' "$0" | g++ -o "$t" -x c++ - && "$t" "$@"
r=$?
rm -f "$t"
exit $r
//code
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hi\n");
return 0;
}
Here's yet another alternative:
#if 0
TMP=$(mktemp -d)
cc -o ${TMP}/a.out ${0} && ${TMP}/a.out ${@:1} ; RV=${?}
rm -rf ${TMP}
exit ${RV}
#endif
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
printf("Hello world\n");
return 0;
}
I know this question is not a recent one, but I decided to throw my answer into the mix anyways. With Clang and LLVM, there is not any need to write out an intermediate file or call an external helper program/script. (apart from clang/clang++/lli)
You can just pipe the output of clang/clang++ to lli.
#if 0
CXX=clang++
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -Werror -std=c++17"
CXXARGS="-xc++ -emit-llvm -c -o -"
CXXCMD="$CXX $CXXFLAGS $CXXARGS $0"
LLICMD="lli -force-interpreter -fake-argv0=$0 -"
$CXXCMD | $LLICMD "$@" ; exit $?
#endif
#include <cstdio>
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
printf ("Hello llvm: %d\n", argc);
for (auto i = 0; i < argc; i++) {
printf("%d: %s\n", i, argv[i]);
}
return 3==argc;
}
The above however does not let you use stdin in your c/c++ script. If bash is your shell, then you can do the following to use stdin:
#if 0
CXX=clang++
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -Wall -Werror -std=c++17"
CXXARGS="-xc++ -emit-llvm -c -o -"
CXXCMD="$CXX $CXXFLAGS $CXXARGS $0"
LLICMD="lli -force-interpreter -fake-argv0=$0"
exec $LLICMD <($CXXCMD) "$@"
#endif
#include <cstdio>
int main (int argc, char **argv) {
printf ("Hello llvm: %d\n", argc);
for (auto i = 0; i < argc; i++) {
printf("%d: %s\n", i, argv[i]);
}
for (int c; EOF != (c=getchar()); putchar(c));
return 3==argc;
}
As stated in a previous answer, if you use tcc
as your compiler, you can put a shebang #!/usr/bin/tcc -run
as the first line of your source file.
However, there is a small problem with that: if you want to compile that same file, gcc
will throw an error: invalid preprocessing directive #!
(tcc
will ignore the shebang and compile just fine).
If you still need to compile with gcc
one workaround is to use the tail
command to cut off the shebang line from the source file before piping it into gcc
:
tail -n+2 helloworld.c | gcc -xc -
Keep in mind that all warnings and/or errors will be off by one line.
You can automate that by creating a bash script that checks whether a file begins with a shebang, something like
if [[ $(head -c2 $1) == '#!' ]]
then
tail -n+2 $1 | gcc -xc -
else
gcc $1
fi
and use that to compile your source instead of directly invoking gcc
.