RJT> I have a book on c programming around here someplace that actually 
 RJT> talks about dealing with c under the unix 
 RJT> environment,  and that's where I'd heard of a.out 
 RJT> in the first place.  Dunno where that book is,  
 RJT> offhand,  though.  I was thinking that the ELF 
 RJT> binary thing sorta obsoleted that,  but I guess I 
 RJT> still have a lot to learn about doing things on 
 RJT> that platform.
 
It's possible that you're thinking of "The C Programming
Language" by Brian W. Kerninghan and Dennis M. Ritchie (aka K&R,
aka The Bible). It has a chapter (11?) on programming in C under UNIX. At
least my edition does (2nd edition, updated to reflect the first ANSI
draft).
 
I think it's more likely that you're referring to "Programming in the
UNIX Environment" (or something similar -- white softcover with cyan
lettering) by Kerninghan & Pike.
 
Anyhow, the fact that a.out is still around actually makes sense given the
origin of the name; it stood for "assembler output" and was only
later used to reference a particular type of binary -- incorrectly, IMHO.
That type of binary is properly called COFF, Common Object File Format, a
variant of which is still used by Microsoft today -- and of course, most
unices.
 
 WG> TO specify the name of your output file, use '-o filename'.

 RJT> Noted.  I went all through man cc and didn't catch that one.  
 
Here's one you won't find in the manual:
 
# touch Makefile
# make myprogram
 
This will build "myprogram" from "myprogram.c",
assuming you have GNU Make and a reasonable system configuration. Touching
the Makefile merely creates a Makefile with no rules, so the implicity
rules kick in.
 
Wes

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