Anitha Boyapati wrote: > I fail to understand the use of x option if all it does is to > interpret the file by means of given language.Can you > please shed some > more light on it. I don't understand the source of your difficulties. The -x option is there for situations when the compiler front end cannot figure out the type of a file. Perhaps the suffix is missing, or is incorrect or nonstandard. One situation may be that there is no suffix, because standard input is being read. For instance mymachine $ gcc -x c - #include <stdio.h> ... type hello world main() here ... then Ctrl-D mymachine $ ./a.out Hello, world! Without the -x, how would gcc know that you are typing in the C language, right? The -x <lang> option does not mean ``behave as a complete front-end for language X''. It just means ``interpret files as if they were of this language''. Note that in gcc -x c++ test.cc the ``-x c++'' is redundant because the same information is deduced from the .cc suffix already. If you want to find out what external symbols are needed by a program, then compile it to .o files, and then try to link with -nodefaultlibs: g++ -c *.cc gcc -nodefaultlibs *.o Then examine the unresolved symbol error messages.
