The GCC compiler recognizes both C and C++ dialects and generates code accordingly. By GCC convention, it is possible to use either the GCC or the G++ compilers equivalently on a source file. The compiler that you use and the extension of your source file determines the dialect used on the input and output files.
When using the GCC compiler, the dialect of a program is always determined by the file extension, as listed in File Types and Extensions. If a file extension shows that it is a C++ source file, the language is set to C++. This means that if you have compile C code contained in a CC file, even if you use the GCC compiler, it automatically mangles function names.
The primary difference between GCC and G++ is that G++ automatically sets the default language dialect to C++ (irrespective of the file extension), and if linking, automatically pulls in the C++ support libraries. This means that even if you compile C code in a .c file with the G++ compiler, it will mangle names.
Name mangling is a concept unique to C++ and other languages that support overloading of symbols. A function is said to be overloaded if the same function can perform different actions based on the arguments passed in, and can return different return values. To support this, C++ compilers encode the type of the function to be invoked in the function name, avoiding multiple definitions of a function with the same name.
Be careful about name mangling if you decide to follow a mixed compilation mode, with some source files containing C code and some others containing C++ code (or using GCC for compiling certain files and G++ for compiling others). To prevent name mangling of a C symbol, you can use the following construct in the symbol declaration.
#ifdef __cplusplus
extern “C” {
£endif
int foo();
int morefoo();
#ifdef __cplusplus
}
£endif
Make these declarations available in a header file and use them in all source files. This causes the compiler to use the C dialect when compiling definitions or references to these symbols.
When compiling with either variant of the compiler, to force a file to a particular dialect, use the -x lang switch. Refer to the GCC documentation for more information on this switch.
- When using the GCC compiler, libstdc++.a and libsupc++.a are not automatically linked in.
- When compiling C++ programs, use the G++ variant of the compiler to make sure all the required support libraries are linked in automatically.
- Adding
-lstdc++
and-lsupc++
to the GCC command are also possible options.
For more information about how to invoke the compiler for different languages, refer to the GNU online documentation.