Applications are usually kept in directories reserved for them. Applications supplied by the system for general use, including program development, are found in /usr/bin. Applications added by system administrators for a specific host computer or local network are often found in /usr/local/bin or /opt.
Administrators favor /usr/local, as it keeps vendor-supplied files and later additions separate [...]
On POSIX-compliant systems, the C compiler is called c89. Historically, the C compiler was simply called cc. Over the years, different vendors have sold UNIX-like systems with C compilers with different facilities and options, but often still called cc.
When the POSIX standard was prepared, it was impossible to define a standard cc command with which [...]
Linux applications are represented by two special types of files: executables and scripts. Executable files are programs that can be run directly by the computer; they correspond to Windows .exe files. Scripts are collections of instructions for another program, an interpreter, to follow. These correspond to Windows .bat or .cmd files, or interpreted BASIC programs.
Linux [...]
Many people think that programming Linux means using C. It’s true that UNIX was originally written in C and that the majority of UNIX applications are written in C, but C is not the only option available to Linux programmers, or UNIX programmers for that matter. In the course of the book, we’ll introduce a [...]