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gccobject-files

Create multple object files at once without using a makefile?

When I try

gcc -c *.c

I get an invalid argument error, and it says no input files.

Solution

  • If you run gcc from a directory where no C source files are present, gcc will receive the *.c argument unexpanded, will try to open a file named *.c and fail, will report this failure and in the absence of further arguments, will complain about the missing input files:

    $ gcc -c *.c
gcc: error: *.c: No such file or directory
gcc: fatal error: no input files
compilation terminated.
$

    The wildcard expansion is performed by the command line interpreter, aka the shell. On a unix system, there are many different shells, sh, csh, tcsh, bash, zsh... all of which expand unquoted wildcards before running the commands. On Windows, the default shells do not expand wildcards for external commands, some programs do it on their own, but most don't. If you run bash on Windows, with or without cygwin, you will get the Unix behavior, but if you run cmd.exe, you won't.

    MinGW is a set of development tools to make Windows native executables. It does not provide a shell and favors using the native libraries and utilities when possible. This is the reason why your command gcc -c *.c does not undergo wildcard expansion on your machine. Install bash or cygwin for a more unix-friendly environment.