UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am hoping someone can give me a good free web resource for writing code to compile a binary executable. I am getting fairly decent at writing shell script, are the .f files just shell scripts? Also, I don't know where to begin on the makefiles. The reason I am curious is because I have been tasked with fixing a binary.x and the code looks foreign. The use C instead of # for comments, does this mean it is in the csh? Any help is appreciated, thanks.

I'm pretty sure .f files are Fortran, no relation to the C shell or any other shell.

If you have gcc fortran, I think you would do

Code:

gfortran file.f -o file

Perhaps more than one .f file would need to be listed for a complete program, depends on the program.

You can also take two steps, and do

Code:

gfortran -c file.f
gfortran file.o -o file

Makefiles are pretty simple in the end, you tell them what files are made from what files.

With this file named Makefile in the same directory, run make:

Code:

# Rule that converts any .f files into .o files
%.o : %.f
        gfortran -c %< -o %@

# Convert these four .o files into one executable
program:a.o b.o c.o d.o
        gfortran a.o b.o c.o d.o -O program

Note that things with eight space in front here are actually tabs and MUST BE tabs.

Okay thanks! that actually seem very straight forward. But the real problem I'm having is within the files that make up the executable. Do you know of a website that can help me understand the commands that are within those files and such?

Which problem? Be specific. It might not be anything to do with the program. Or might have to do with the way you're compiling it. I can't see your computer from here.

Fortran is a programming language which you will need to learn if you wish to debug it. It doesn't resemble shell.

That is the thing, I need to understand the programming language to find the problem. I realize it may not be the program, but I can't know that if I don't know what the program is telling the computer to do. The reason for my post is to see if anyone could provide a good source for me to learn the language so that I can figure out the problem. I apologize if I am making this difficult. I'm still learning this stuff and it is hard for me to discern what is relevant and what is not.

---------- Post updated at 02:09 PM ---------- Previous update was at 01:16 PM ----------

For anyone else that sees this and needs a reference, I found one here. Thank your help Corona688.

Thank you for posting that, I kept finding compiler instructions instead of fortran ones...

If you need a (very) short introduction into using "make" and its makefiles you might want to read this introduction i wrote. Real-world makefiles are a lot more complicated than this but it gets you at least started on the idea.

I hope this helps.

bakunin