I need a easy & free c compiler

[aksimhal]

Hi,

I am a rookie "programmer", with basically no programing experience.
I am learning from a book titled The Absolute Beginners Guide to C .
And the author recommends that I use a C Compiler. So the bottom line is -
I need a easy to use and free C compiler. If any one knows of a website from where I can download a compiler from, I would REALLY appreciate it. Thanks.

[Eldarion]

Hi,

I am a rookie "programmer", with basically no programing experience.
I am learning from a book titled The Absolute Beginners Guide to C .
And the author recommends that I use a C Compiler. So the bottom line is -
I need a easy to use and free C compiler. If any one knows of a website from where I can download a compiler from, I would REALLY appreciate it. Thanks.

The problem is, easy and free almost never go together. :)

There is one that I know of, however. For unknown reasons, Microsoft is offering free downloads of its "Express" version of .NET tools. This includes a C++ IDE and compiler.

You can download it free from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support/install/

Hope this helps!

[Matt Krass]

Also look at Dev-C++ IDE with mingw compiler at www.bloodshed.net, I believe the newest stable version is 4, but the beta of 5 works fine for me.
Keep in mind none of these suggestions will be good for robot programming, for that you need at least the C18 compiler and preferably MPLAB from Microchip, which is of course in the kit.

Hope that helped,
Matt

[Jared Russell]

And the author recommends that I use a C Compiler.

Bah, compilers are overrated. Be a man and convert to assembly yourself! jk...

gcc is industry standard, cross-platform, and worth learning how to use at some point in your education.

That said, you probably want a whole IDE (integrated development environment), and of those available, Eclipse and Visual C++ are the most popular and most supported - VC++ also gives you the most verbose and useful error messages in my experience.

The above free download of Visual C++ is a good starting point.

[Mike]

Bah, compilers are overrated. Be a man and convert to assembly yourself! jk...

gcc is industry standard, cross-platform, and worth learning how to use at some point in your education.

That said, you probably want a whole IDE (integrated development environment), and of those available, Eclipse and Visual C++ are the most popular and most supported - VC++ also gives you the most verbose and useful error messages in my experience.

The above free download of Visual C++ is a good starting point.
Compilers convert it to machine code, not assembly :P

I'd go with gcc, it's used a lot in the workforce and (if coded correctly) will work cross-platform.

[steven114]

GCC and Eclipse is the way to go! Totally free, and very well supported.

[Astronouth7303]

"Easy" and "C" never go in the same sentence. Period.

[Jared Russell]

Compilers convert it to machine code, not assembly :P

I'd go with gcc, it's used a lot in the workforce and (if coded correctly) will work cross-platform.

Almost all compilers out there are now multi-pass and produce some sort of assembly output before converting that to machine code. GCC in particular has several steps of compiling...first make a syntax tree, then convert that to RTL, optimize, create assembly, THEN assemble to make machine code. This is done so that various parts of the process can be improved/swapped out independently.

So :p j/k