Compiling and running programs on Unix/Linux

To compile and run programs on Linux you have first to login into your account in linux.uwsuper.edu with your login and password provided by the instructor.

Java Programs

  1. Go to cs202 folder by entering the command cd cs202. Linux machine will respond with a different prompt as it is shown below:
    student@linux:~> cd cs202
    student@linux:~/cs202>

    If you are designing an applet, you will need to put the Java source, Java bytecode, and calling HTML script in public_html directory on your Linux account. The general procedure is similar to the one described above.

    To open the applet, enter the following URL into the browser window:

    http://linux.uwsuper.edu/~your_login/filename.html

    where your_login is your Linux login and filename.html is the HTML script containing the <applet> tag.

  2. To compile your program use instruction
    student@linux:~/cs201> javac Myfile.java (make sure to use .java extension)

    If the compilation is successful you will see no warnings on the screen. Just a new prompt appears in the line following the javac instruction. If the compiler finds an error, the number of the line in your source file containing the error will be displayed.

  3. After successful compilation of your program by using the javac command you will get file filemane.class in the same directory. In order to run it enter the command
    student@linux:~/cs201> java Myfile (no .class extension)

    If your program hangs up, enter Ctrl-C to terminate it.

C++ programs

  1. To compile your program use instruction
    g++ filename.cpp

    If the compilation is successful you will see no warnings on the screen. Just a new prompt appears in the line following the g++ instruction. If the compiler finds an error, the number of the line in your source file containing the error will be displayed.

  2. After successful compilation of your program by using the g++ command you will get file a.out in the same directory. In order to run it enter
    ./a.out

    Alternatively, to create an executable file with a specific name, use the g++ instruction with the "-o" key:

    g++ filename.cpp -o filename2

    In this case executable file filename2 will be created and can be executed by entering

    ./filename2

    If your program hangs up type Ctrl-C to terminate it.

Some useful Unix/Linux commands

Unix as well as Windows is an operating system, and a number of very convenient text editors and window managers are designed for it. However, since we use just a remote access to Linux machine via ssh that is not designed to exchange graphical information from the Linux screen, we have to type in all the necessary commands.

Shell commandsComments
ls
cd Mydir
mkdir dir_name
rmdir dir_name
rm file_name
cp old_file new_file
mv ol_file new_file
vi file_name
joe file_name
nedit filename
less filename
list files in current directory
go to subfolder Mydir
make new folder dir
delete (empty only) folder dir
delete file file_name
copy old_file to new_file
rename old_file to new_file
edit file with vi editor
edit file with joe editor
edit file with nedit editor (in graphics mode only)
open file only for reading

For more information refer to Linux tutorial for beginners