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Journey of a C Program to Linux Executable in 4 Stages

You write a C program, use gcc to compile it, and you get an executable. It is pretty simple. Right?

Have you ever wondered what happens during the compilation process and how the C program gets converted to an executable?

There are four main stages through which a source code passes in order to finally become an executable.

The four stages for a C program to become an executable are the following:

  1. Pre-processing
  2. Compilation
  3. Assembly
  4. Linking

In Part-I of this article series, we will discuss the steps that the gcc compiler goes through when a C program source code is compiled into an executable.

Before going any further, lets take a quick look on how to compile and run a ‘C’ code using gcc, using a simple hello world example.

$ vi print.c
#include <stdio.h>
#define STRING "Hello World"
int main(void)
{
/* Using a macro to print 'Hello World'*/
printf(STRING);
return 0;
}

Now, lets run gcc compiler over this source code to create the executable.

$ gcc -Wall print.c -o print

In the above command:

  • gcc – Invokes the GNU C compiler
  • -Wall – gcc flag that enables all warnings. -W stands for warning, and we are passing “all” to -W.
  • print.c – Input C program
  • -o print – Instruct C compiler to create the C executable as print. If you don’t specify -o, by default C compiler will create the executable with name a.out

Finally, execute print which will execute the C program and display hello world.

$ ./print
Hello World

Note: When you are working on a big project that contains several C program, use make utility to manage your C program compilation as we discussed earlier.

Now that we have a basic idea about how gcc is used to convert a source code into binary, we’ll review the 4 stages a C program has to go through to become an executable.

1. PRE-PROCESSING

This is the very first stage through which a source code passes. In this stage the following tasks are done:

  1. Macro substitution
  2. Comments are stripped off
  3. Expansion of the included files

To understand preprocessing better, you can compile the above ‘print.c’ program using flag -E, which will print the preprocessed output to stdout.

$ gcc -Wall -E print.c

Even better, you can use flag ‘-save-temps’ as shown below. ‘-save-temps’ flag instructs compiler to store the temporary intermediate files used by the gcc compiler in the current directory.

$ gcc -Wall -save-temps print.c -o print

So when we compile the program print.c with -save-temps flag we get the following intermediate files in the current directory (along with the print executable)

$ ls
print.i
print.s
print.o

The preprocessed output is stored in the temporary file that has the extension .i (i.e ‘print.i’ in this example)

Now, lets open print.i file and view the content.

$ vi print.i
......
......
......
......
# 846 "/usr/include/stdio.h" 3 4
extern FILE *popen (__const char *__command, __const char *__modes) ;
extern int pclose (FILE *__stream);
extern char *ctermid (char *__s) __attribute__ ((__nothrow__));

# 886 "/usr/include/stdio.h" 3 4
extern void flockfile (FILE *__stream) __attribute__ ((__nothrow__));
extern int ftrylockfile (FILE *__stream) __attribute__ ((__nothrow__)) ;
extern void funlockfile (FILE *__stream) __attribute__ ((__nothrow__));

# 916 "/usr/include/stdio.h" 3 4
# 2 "print.c" 2

int main(void)
{
printf("Hello World");
return 0;
}

In the above output, you can see that the source file is now filled with lots and lots of information, but still at the end of it we can see the lines of code written by us. Lets analyze on these lines of code first.

  1. The first observation is that the argument to printf() now contains directly the string “Hello World” rather than the macro. In fact the macro definition and usage has completely disappeared. This proves the first task that all the macros are expanded in the preprocessing stage.
  2. The second observation is that the comment that we wrote in our original code is not there. This proves that all the comments are stripped off.
  3. The third observation is that beside the line ‘#include’ is missing and instead of that we see whole lot of code in its place. So its safe to conclude that stdio.h has been expanded and literally included in our source file. Hence we understand how the compiler is able to see the declaration of printf() function.

When I searched print.i file, I found, The function printf is declared as:

extern int printf (__const char *__restrict __format, ...);

The keyword ‘extern’ tells that the function printf() is not defined here. It is external to this file. We will later see how gcc gets to the definition of printf().

You can use gdb to debug your c programs. Now that we have a decent understanding on what happens during the preprocessing stage. let us move on to the next stage.

2. COMPILING

After the compiler is done with the pre-processor stage. The next step is to take print.i as input, compile it and produce an intermediate compiled output. The output file for this stage is ‘print.s’. The output present in print.s is assembly level instructions.

Open the print.s file in an editor and view the content.

$ vi print.s
.file "print.c"
.section .rodata
.LC0:
.string "Hello World"
.text
.globl main
.type main, @function
main:
.LFB0:
.cfi_startproc
pushq %rbp
.cfi_def_cfa_offset 16
movq %rsp, %rbp
.cfi_offset 6, -16
.cfi_def_cfa_register 6
movl $.LC0, %eax
movq %rax, %rdi
movl $0, %eax
call printf
movl $0, %eax
leave
ret
.cfi_endproc
.LFE0:
.size main, .-main
.ident "GCC: (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) 4.4.3"
.section .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits

Though I am not much into assembly level programming but a quick look concludes that this assembly level output is in some form of instructions which the assembler can understand and convert it into machine level language.

3. ASSEMBLY

At this stage the print.s file is taken as an input and an intermediate file print.o is produced. This file is also known as the object file.

This file is produced by the assembler that understands and converts a ‘.s’ file with assembly instructions into a ‘.o’ object file which contains machine level instructions. At this stage only the existing code is converted into machine language, the function calls like printf() are not resolved.

Since the output of this stage is a machine level file (print.o). So we cannot view the content of it. If you still try to open the print.o and view it, you’ll see something that is totally not readable.

$ vi print.o
^?ELF^B^A^A^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^A^@>^@^A^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@0^
^@UH<89>å¸^@^@^@^@H<89>ǸHello World^@^@GCC: (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5) 4.4.3^@^
T^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^AzR^@^Ax^P^A^[^L^G^H<90>^A^@^@^\^@^@]^@^@^@^@A^N^PC<86>^B^M^F
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@.symtab^@.strtab^@.shstrtab^@.rela.text^@.data^@.bss^@.rodata
^@.comment^@.note.GNU-stack^@.rela.eh_frame^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^
...
...
…

The only thing we can explain by looking at the print.o file is about the string ELF.

ELF stands for executable and linkable format.

This is a relatively new format for machine level object files and executable that are produced by gcc. Prior to this, a format known as a.out was used. ELF is said to be more sophisticated format than a.out (We might dig deeper into the ELF format in some other future article).

Note: If you compile your code without specifying the name of the output file, the output file produced has name ‘a.out’ but the format now have changed to ELF. It is just that the default executable file name remains the same.

4. LINKING

This is the final stage at which all the linking of function calls with their definitions are done. As discussed earlier, till this stage gcc doesn’t know about the definition of functions like printf(). Until the compiler knows exactly where all of these functions are implemented, it simply uses a place-holder for the function call. It is at this stage, the definition of printf() is resolved and the actual address of the function printf() is plugged in.

The linker comes into action at this stage and does this task.

The linker also does some extra work; it combines some extra code to our program that is required when the program starts and when the program ends. For example, there is code which is standard for setting up the running environment like passing command line arguments, passing environment variables to every program. Similarly some standard code that is required to return the return value of the program to the system.

The above tasks of the compiler can be verified by a small experiment. Since now we already know that the linker converts .o file (print.o) to an executable file (print).

So if we compare the file sizes of both the print.o and print file, we’ll see the difference.

$ size print.o
   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
     97	      0	      0	     97	     61	print.o 

$ size print
   text	   data	    bss	    dec	    hex	filename
   1181	    520	     16	   1717	    6b5	print

Through the size command we get a rough idea about how the size of the output file increases from an object file to an executable file. This is all because of that extra standard code that linker combines with our program.

Now you know what happens to a C program before it becomes an executable. You know about Preprocessing, Compiling, Assembly, and Linking stages There is lot more to the linking stage, which we will cover in our next article in this series.

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Comments on this entry are closed.

  • AMIT October 5, 2011, 8:27 am

    Very nice explanation !!
    Waiting for more.

  • Jason October 5, 2011, 9:03 am

    Clear and concise! Thank you very much.

  • TommyZee October 5, 2011, 9:47 am

    Very well done maestro! :P)

  • Eric October 5, 2011, 11:04 am

    Noob alert: I couldn’t get it to work unless I included .

  • Eric October 5, 2011, 11:07 am

    I think I know what happened. The comment processor stripped off the “stdio.h” from my last comment. It might have done that for the Hello World code too.

  • Ramesh Natarajan October 5, 2011, 12:56 pm

    @Eric,

    Thanks for pointing it out. It is fixed now in the print.c program mentioned above.

  • Júlio Hoffimann Mendes October 5, 2011, 5:09 pm

    Hi Ramesh,

    Nice post, would be great to get deeper in the ELF format in future articles as you said. 🙂

    Regards,
    Júlio.

  • Himanshu October 5, 2011, 7:34 pm

    Thanks you all for your comments.
    As of now, you’ll soon get to see Part-II of this series. After that I will write on ELF too 🙂

  • Reynold October 5, 2011, 8:03 pm

    Great article 🙂

  • Dennis October 6, 2011, 12:20 am

    excellent!!

  • Gregory October 6, 2011, 7:09 am

    Very nice article, many times used gcc but never thought about details

  • Chuck October 6, 2011, 5:19 pm

    Very Nice. You hit on a helpful topic to expand our horizons.

  • peter October 8, 2011, 6:34 am

    Great article. More please.

  • Himanshu October 9, 2011, 12:19 am

    Thank you all again for appreciation. Article on ‘Linking process (advanced)’ can arrive anytime.

  • behzad October 12, 2011, 3:35 pm

    this was a good read, thanks

  • Welington October 14, 2011, 4:34 pm

    Pretty nice article.
    Congratulations!

    I hope that it’s going to be a first of a series.

  • Albert Joseph October 15, 2011, 3:28 am

    Thanks for the article. I’ll be visiting here frequently for more knowledge 🙂

  • Bill November 17, 2011, 10:21 am

    I believe that coff (common object file format) is prior to ELF. a.out is just a file name.

  • rahul kumar dubey January 10, 2012, 7:46 am

    really nice explanation.. please keep it up…
    it will be nice if you can post some article realted to how / what exactly happens at machine level.. when computer starts and how “hello world” for e.g. is manipulate d in 101010101 form at hardware level

  • Himanshu January 10, 2012, 9:26 am

    @rahul kumar dubey

    Thanks Rahul.
    Sure, whenever I get a chance I’ll write an article over it.

  • Deepak March 15, 2012, 6:30 am

    Very good explanation. Hope to see some more articles from you.

  • Dibyendu Chakraborty April 2, 2012, 3:26 am

    Excellent lecture … ready for more.

  • kalaiselvan April 24, 2012, 6:33 am

    thank you

  • Tarun Thakur May 2, 2012, 11:20 pm

    Awesome .. Great job done. Crystal clear steps provided. In short time, understanding of internal steps from program to executable is made.
    Thank U .. !!

  • Shashank July 13, 2012, 9:17 am

    Please keep writing more.
    Very nicely done

  • bril July 24, 2012, 12:26 am

    Excellent…. well written and well explained, You just saved my day. Thanks for such an awesome article.

  • Tayyab August 4, 2012, 1:40 am

    Brilliant job ……
    Thank u so much !!

  • Ashish August 29, 2012, 10:38 am

    Really Nice Stuff…Thanks a lot….waiting for more like this on unix internals

  • Anonymous September 5, 2012, 6:03 am

    extra ordinary !!!

  • sujith September 7, 2012, 10:33 am

    very clear and good for freshers…

  • Prasad October 23, 2012, 9:50 am

    A very good explanation… 🙂

  • Rajeev October 26, 2012, 5:25 am

    Nice Article very con-vincible. I have one doubt about the LOADER. How LOADER program come into play in the above example and when.

    Thanks in advance.

  • soumyajit November 28, 2012, 3:31 am

    great article sir

  • Pradeep January 17, 2013, 6:57 am

    Very well explained

  • Mayank February 9, 2013, 10:25 am

    Very well explained for beginners.

  • slekcher February 16, 2013, 5:41 pm

    At the linking stage, you said the printf() definition will be included in our executable file, but is the definition in machine code?

  • shiv February 26, 2013, 10:29 pm

    Awesome work!! Have been looking for such an article for some time. Very well explained.

  • Anonymous May 24, 2013, 6:56 am

    superb explanation with the demonstrated commands … thanx

  • Tarunjit Singh May 30, 2013, 1:09 am

    You can mention that the option to see the output after compiling and before assembling is

    $$ gcc -S print.c

  • Abhisek Pattnaik June 5, 2013, 11:01 am

    Please provide the links to the part 2 & ELF in the article content itself.

  • prasant June 10, 2013, 3:42 am

    thanx for these usefull informations…….

  • manoj June 16, 2013, 3:28 am

    very concise & helpful !!!…

  • Hanu June 21, 2013, 2:15 am

    Very nice article, many times used gcc but never thought about details

  • Nithin July 3, 2013, 3:48 am

    Thanks for the detailed explanation…

  • mahe July 16, 2013, 6:38 am

    nice explanation.. 😀

  • prabhu August 4, 2013, 4:17 am

    clear explation…

  • Harish August 5, 2013, 2:25 pm

    very nice explanation.. Is there some website to learn c from scratch in deep..?

  • chandu August 7, 2013, 12:43 am

    superb article… thanks a lot…!!

  • Akshara August 18, 2013, 7:32 am

    Very Nicely explained

  • Akshara August 18, 2013, 7:41 am

    i have one questions… on which of these 4 stages inline functions are handled???

  • Anonymous September 11, 2013, 1:13 am

    Awesome!!! Keep up the good work

  • Himanshu AKA Anky September 23, 2013, 6:23 am

    AWESOME work bro Helpfull in mah assignment

  • Duryodhan September 28, 2013, 10:53 pm

    superb….man very helpfull for me!!!!!!!

  • anand September 30, 2013, 2:36 am

    Cool Stuff. Definitely helps in understanding the Internal of a c language.

  • satya October 1, 2013, 1:09 am

    hi sir,
    i like ur blog, very much.
    my question is, when i executed .cpp file with g++ command and then i searched for .s file which is not there
    print.c print print.o print-size

    where is print.o, i want to see my assembling code….
    how can i see it.

    please help, thanks in advance…

  • Dharmik February 25, 2014, 12:43 pm

    Very nicely explained. .. Always liking this site

  • Ajay March 27, 2014, 11:53 pm

    Nicely Explained.. good Work

  • Anonymous August 22, 2014, 5:04 am

    why do we need different compilation stages???

  • abhishek September 22, 2014, 7:34 am

    when you are going to write the next article on this series ?

    We are waiting eagerly !!

  • Sanjana December 19, 2014, 10:26 am

    Nice eplananation 😀

  • Nitin January 15, 2015, 7:32 am

    Thanks a ton. I am used to programming in windows. I am learning linux programming and this was really helpful.

  • Manish March 5, 2015, 7:21 am

    Very simple and nicely explained. Thanks!

  • Teja March 14, 2015, 7:02 am

    Very Clear explanation:)

  • PK March 24, 2015, 10:48 am

    Nice explanation

  • Brian March 30, 2015, 11:24 am

    I apologize ahead of time for this question because it is probably a dumb one…

    I was under the impression that machine level instructions are only 0s and 1s. How come the ‘.o’ object file, which contains machine level instructions, has other symbols?

  • Ravi kumar May 31, 2015, 10:43 pm

    Hi,
    You gave great explanation for Stages in C. I’m expecting from you to give more about ELF and Linking Stages.

  • Prasad June 28, 2015, 2:29 pm

    Thanks !! That was really nice.

  • JK July 4, 2015, 1:32 am

    Nicely explained!

  • Anonymous July 8, 2015, 5:23 am

    thank you so much 🙂

  • Anonymous July 16, 2015, 9:12 am

    Simple , concise an awsum explanation…hats off…!!!

  • Bill Springer July 20, 2015, 8:19 am

    The file format preceding ELF, was COFF (common object file format).

  • Sujit DK August 23, 2015, 10:54 am

    awesome!!!….nice and simple!!

  • Bhaarat October 18, 2015, 10:08 pm

    Hi
    Thumbs Up for the article, however I think the Linking stage needs a bit more explanation. Below is what I mean.

    ” It is at this stage, the definition of printf() is resolved and the actual address of the function printf() is plugged in.”

    Question: How printf() is resolved and its definition is included?
    Answer: The linker links the standard C library with the object files we have developed and that is how the definition gets included.

    You might want to elaborate this and include.

    Thanks

  • Manpreet Singh November 2, 2015, 10:52 pm

    very nice stuff. Looking forward to follow up articles

  • Syed Azaruddin January 28, 2016, 12:26 am

    Really great content about this concept.. Really appreciable..
    Thank you so much..

  • Rakshith March 31, 2016, 1:53 am

    Beautifully explained with every minute detail!!
    Thank you.

  • Sakshi Shreya May 9, 2016, 1:28 pm

    Very nice article. Whatever I was finding, I got it here. Thank you for explaining.

  • prashant bhaskat malgave May 15, 2016, 11:34 pm

    Thank u so much….
    During starting i face too much problems when i am going to use the linus terminal to write c program.
    But after reading this tutorial i got too much idea about creation and execution of c program using linux terminal .i found this information too useful……………………….

  • Anon May 18, 2016, 6:37 am

    Very informative and deep!!..
    Thanks a ton! .

  • Mahendra May 21, 2016, 12:10 am

    Very nice explanation….

  • rajnish soni June 19, 2016, 12:32 am

    Thanks you sir for explanation.

  • Kevin March 2, 2017, 7:23 am

    Thank you,Sir,for your excellent work.

  • vishalakshi April 13, 2017, 11:24 pm

    Thank you so much sir.

  • Gowthaman April 1, 2019, 12:15 am

    AweSome Article . I really love it. Please Do more stuff. Also about reverse Engineering