Is it possible to let bash to detect compiling error in C?

Question

I have a tricky requirement:

I need to use bash to compile 100 programs, say 1.c, 2.c, 3.c ... 100.c, I want to keep those c programs which was compiled successfully and remove c programs which compilation errors.

Up to now I can only achieve the goal that compiling those 100 programs but I really have no idea how to detect whether there was failed compilation in these 100 programs.

Thanks for the hint! I am trying working on a solution based on your idea. — , May 04 '15 at 09:42

merlin2011 · Answer 1 · 2015-05-04T09:59:12.170

7

Just check whether the return code is nonzero, and delete the file if it is nonzero. The return code is stored in the shell variable $? after running the compiler.

Here is the long form of what such a script would look like.

for i in {1..99}; 
do
    gcc ${i}.c 2> /dev/null > /dev/null

    if [[ $? -ne 0 ]]; then
        rm ${i}.c
    fi

done

As user268396, the the middle part can be shortened to the following.

gcc ${i}.c || rm ${i}.c

The use of the short-circuiting operator || will ensure that the latter statement will only run if the former statement fails (ie, exits with a non-zero return code).

edited May 04 '15 at 09:59

answered May 04 '15 at 09:41

merlin2011

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3

You can simplify this further: use `cc $sourcefile || rm $sourcefile`. – user268396 May 04 '15 at 09:44
1

@user268396, Good point. I'll edit the answer to show both the long form and the short form. – merlin2011 May 04 '15 at 09:45
I think since bash 3.x, you don't need to fork for `seq` any more, you can just use `{1..99}` – chw21 May 04 '15 at 09:55
@chw21, Good point. Fixed. – merlin2011 May 04 '15 at 09:58

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered May 04 '15 at 09:51

0

You can check for the error code that the compiler returns, it is stored in $?

for f in *.c; do
    t=${f%.c}      # Strip the .c from the source file name
    gcc -o $t $f   # Try to compile
    if [[ "$?" -ne 0 ]]; then
        rm $f
    fi
done

answered May 04 '15 at 09:51

chw21

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Is it possible to let bash to detect compiling error in C?

2 Answers2