x86_64-linux-gnu-cpp-6 (1)
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NAME
cpp - The C PreprocessorSYNOPSIS
cpp [-Dmacro[=defn]...] [-Umacro][-Idir...] [-iquotedir...]
[-Wwarn...]
[-M|-MM] [-MG] [-MF filename]
[-MP] [-MQ target...]
[-MT target...]
[-P] [-fno-working-directory]
[-x language] [-std=standard]
infile outfile
Only the most useful options are listed here; see below for the remainder.
DESCRIPTION
The C preprocessor, often known as cpp, is a macro processor that is used automatically by the C compiler to transform your program before compilation. It is called a macro processor because it allows you to define macros, which are brief abbreviations for longer constructs.The C preprocessor is intended to be used only with C, C
Having said that, you can often get away with using cpp on things which are not C. Other Algol-ish programming languages are often safe (Pascal, Ada, etc.) So is assembly, with caution. -traditional-cpp mode preserves more white space, and is otherwise more permissive. Many of the problems can be avoided by writing C or C
Wherever possible, you should use a preprocessor geared to the language you are writing in. Modern versions of the
C preprocessors vary in some details. This manual discusses the
This manual describes the behavior of the
For clarity, unless noted otherwise, references to
OPTIONS
The C preprocessor expects two file names as arguments, infile and outfile. The preprocessor reads infile together with any other files it specifies with #include. All the output generated by the combined input files is written in outfile.Either infile or outfile may be -, which as infile means to read from standard input and as outfile means to write to standard output. Also, if either file is omitted, it means the same as if - had been specified for that file.
Unless otherwise noted, or the option ends in =, all options which take an argument may have that argument appear either immediately after the option, or with a space between option and argument: -Ifoo and -I foo have the same effect.
Many options have multi-letter names; therefore multiple single-letter options may not be grouped: -dM is very different from -d -M.
- -D name
- Predefine name as a macro, with definition 1.
- -D name=definition
-
The contents of definition are tokenized and processed as if
they appeared during translation phase three in a #define
directive. In particular, the definition will be truncated by
embedded newline characters.
If you are invoking the preprocessor from a shell or shell-like program you may need to use the shell's quoting syntax to protect characters such as spaces that have a meaning in the shell syntax.
If you wish to define a function-like macro on the command line, write its argument list with surrounding parentheses before the equals sign (if any). Parentheses are meaningful to most shells, so you will need to quote the option. With sh and csh, -D'name(args...)=definition' works.
-D and -U options are processed in the order they are given on the command line. All -imacros file and -include file options are processed after all -D and -U options.
- -U name
- Cancel any previous definition of name, either built in or provided with a -D option.
- -undef
- Do not predefine any system-specific or GCC-specific macros. The standard predefined macros remain defined.
- -I dir
-
Add the directory dir to the list of directories to be searched
for header files.
Directories named by -I are searched before the standard system include directories. If the directory dir is a standard system include directory, the option is ignored to ensure that the default search order for system directories and the special treatment of system headers are not defeated . If dir begins with "=", then the "=" will be replaced by the sysroot prefix; see --sysroot and -isysroot.
- -o file
- Write output to file. This is the same as specifying file as the second non-option argument to cpp. gcc has a different interpretation of a second non-option argument, so you must use -o to specify the output file.
- -Wall
- Turns on all optional warnings which are desirable for normal code. At present this is -Wcomment, -Wtrigraphs, -Wmultichar and a warning about integer promotion causing a change of sign in "#if" expressions. Note that many of the preprocessor's warnings are on by default and have no options to control them.
- -Wcomment
- -Wcomments
- Warn whenever a comment-start sequence /* appears in a /* comment, or whenever a backslash-newline appears in a // comment. (Both forms have the same effect.)
- -Wtrigraphs
-
Most trigraphs in comments cannot affect the meaning of the program.
However, a trigraph that would form an escaped newline (??/ at
the end of a line) can, by changing where the comment begins or ends.
Therefore, only trigraphs that would form escaped newlines produce
warnings inside a comment.
This option is implied by -Wall. If -Wall is not given, this option is still enabled unless trigraphs are enabled. To get trigraph conversion without warnings, but get the other -Wall warnings, use -trigraphs -Wall -Wno-trigraphs.
- -Wtraditional
-
Warn about certain constructs that behave differently in traditional and
ISO C.Also warn aboutISO Cconstructs that have no traditional C equivalent, and problematic constructs which should be avoided.
- -Wundef
- Warn whenever an identifier which is not a macro is encountered in an #if directive, outside of defined. Such identifiers are replaced with zero.
- -Wunused-macros
-
Warn about macros defined in the main file that are unused. A macro
is used if it is expanded or tested for existence at least once.
The preprocessor will also warn if the macro has not been used at the
time it is redefined or undefined.
Built-in macros, macros defined on the command line, and macros defined in include files are not warned about.
Note: If a macro is actually used, but only used in skipped conditional blocks, then
CPPwill report it as unused. To avoid the warning in such a case, you might improve the scope of the macro's definition by, for example, moving it into the first skipped block. Alternatively, you could provide a dummy use with something like:#if defined the_macro_causing_the_warning #endif
- -Wendif-labels
-
Warn whenever an #else or an #endif are followed by text.
This usually happens in code of the form
#if FOO ... #else FOO ... #endif FOO
The second and third "FOO" should be in comments, but often are not in older programs. This warning is on by default.
- -Werror
- Make all warnings into hard errors. Source code which triggers warnings will be rejected.
- -Wsystem-headers
- Issue warnings for code in system headers. These are normally unhelpful in finding bugs in your own code, therefore suppressed. If you are responsible for the system library, you may want to see them.
- -w
-
Suppress all warnings, including those which GNU CPPissues by default.
- -pedantic
- Issue all the mandatory diagnostics listed in the C standard. Some of them are left out by default, since they trigger frequently on harmless code.
- -pedantic-errors
-
Issue all the mandatory diagnostics, and make all mandatory diagnostics
into errors. This includes mandatory diagnostics that GCCissues without -pedantic but treats as warnings.
- -M
-
Instead of outputting the result of preprocessing, output a rule
suitable for make describing the dependencies of the main
source file. The preprocessor outputs one make rule containing
the object file name for that source file, a colon, and the names of all
the included files, including those coming from -include or
-imacros command-line options.
Unless specified explicitly (with -MT or -MQ), the object file name consists of the name of the source file with any suffix replaced with object file suffix and with any leading directory parts removed. If there are many included files then the rule is split into several lines using \-newline. The rule has no commands.
This option does not suppress the preprocessor's debug output, such as -dM. To avoid mixing such debug output with the dependency rules you should explicitly specify the dependency output file with -MF, or use an environment variable like
DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT. Debug output will still be sent to the regular output stream as normal.Passing -M to the driver implies -E, and suppresses warnings with an implicit -w.
- -MM
-
Like -M but do not mention header files that are found in
system header directories, nor header files that are included,
directly or indirectly, from such a header.
This implies that the choice of angle brackets or double quotes in an #include directive does not in itself determine whether that header will appear in -MM dependency output. This is a slight change in semantics from
GCCversions 3.0 and earlier. - -MF file
-
When used with -M or -MM, specifies a
file to write the dependencies to. If no -MF switch is given
the preprocessor sends the rules to the same place it would have sent
preprocessed output.
When used with the driver options -MD or -MMD, -MF overrides the default dependency output file.
- -MG
-
In conjunction with an option such as -M requesting
dependency generation, -MG assumes missing header files are
generated files and adds them to the dependency list without raising
an error. The dependency filename is taken directly from the
"#include" directive without prepending any path. -MG
also suppresses preprocessed output, as a missing header file renders
this useless.
This feature is used in automatic updating of makefiles.
- -MP
-
This option instructs CPPto add a phony target for each dependency other than the main file, causing each to depend on nothing. These dummy rules work around errors make gives if you remove header files without updating the Makefile to match.
This is typical output:
test.o: test.c test.h test.h:
- -MT target
-
Change the target of the rule emitted by dependency generation. By
default CPPtakes the name of the main input file, deletes any directory components and any file suffix such as .c, and appends the platform's usual object suffix. The result is the target.
An -MT option will set the target to be exactly the string you specify. If you want multiple targets, you can specify them as a single argument to -MT, or use multiple -MT options.
For example, -MT '$(objpfx)foo.o' might give
$(objpfx)foo.o: foo.c
- -MQ target
-
Same as -MT, but it quotes any characters which are special to
Make. -MQ '$(objpfx)foo.o' gives
$$(objpfx)foo.o: foo.c
The default target is automatically quoted, as if it were given with -MQ.
- -MD
-
-MD is equivalent to -M -MF file, except that
-E is not implied. The driver determines file based on
whether an -o option is given. If it is, the driver uses its
argument but with a suffix of .d, otherwise it takes the name
of the input file, removes any directory components and suffix, and
applies a .d suffix.
If -MD is used in conjunction with -E, any -o switch is understood to specify the dependency output file, but if used without -E, each -o is understood to specify a target object file.
Since -E is not implied, -MD can be used to generate a dependency output file as a side-effect of the compilation process.
- -MMD
- Like -MD except mention only user header files, not system header files.
- -x c
- -x c++
- -x objective-c
- -x assembler-with-cpp
-
Specify the source language: C, C++, Objective-C, or assembly. This has nothing to do with standards conformance or extensions; it merely selects which base syntax to expect. If you give none of these options, cpp will deduce the language from the extension of the source file: .c, .cc, .m, or .S. Some other common extensions for C++and assembly are also recognized. If cpp does not recognize the extension, it will treat the file as C; this is the most generic mode.
Note: Previous versions of cpp accepted a -lang option which selected both the language and the standards conformance level. This option has been removed, because it conflicts with the -l option.
- -std=standard
- -ansi
-
Specify the standard to which the code should conform. Currently CPPknows about C and C++standards; others may be added in the future.
standard may be one of:
-
- c90
- c89
- iso9899:1990
-
The ISO Cstandard from 1990. c90 is the customary shorthand for this version of the standard.
The -ansi option is equivalent to -std=c90.
- iso9899:199409
- The 1990 C standard, as amended in 1994.
- iso9899:1999
- c99
- iso9899:199x
- c9x
-
The revised ISO Cstandard, published in December 1999. Before publication, this was known as C9X.
- iso9899:2011
- c11
- c1x
-
The revised ISO Cstandard, published in December 2011. Before publication, this was known as C1X.
- gnu90
- gnu89
-
The 1990 C standard plus GNUextensions. This is the default.
- gnu99
- gnu9x
-
The 1999 C standard plus GNUextensions.
- gnu11
- gnu1x
-
The 2011 C standard plus GNUextensions.
- c++98
-
The 1998 ISO Cstandard plus amendments.++
- gnu++98
-
The same as -std=c++98 plus GNUextensions. This is the default for C++code.
-
- -I-
-
Split the include path. Any directories specified with -I
options before -I- are searched only for headers requested with
"#include "file""; they are not searched for
"#include <file>". If additional directories are
specified with -I options after the -I-, those
directories are searched for all #include directives.
In addition, -I- inhibits the use of the directory of the current file directory as the first search directory for "#include "file"".
This option has been deprecated.
- -nostdinc
- Do not search the standard system directories for header files. Only the directories you have specified with -I options (and the directory of the current file, if appropriate) are searched.
- -nostdinc++
-
Do not search for header files in the C++-specific standard directories, but do still search the other standard directories. (This option is used when building the C++library.)
- -include file
-
Process file as if "#include "file"" appeared as the first
line of the primary source file. However, the first directory searched
for file is the preprocessor's working directory instead of
the directory containing the main source file. If not found there, it
is searched for in the remainder of the "#include "..."" search
chain as normal.
If multiple -include options are given, the files are included in the order they appear on the command line.
- -imacros file
-
Exactly like -include, except that any output produced by
scanning file is thrown away. Macros it defines remain defined.
This allows you to acquire all the macros from a header without also
processing its declarations.
All files specified by -imacros are processed before all files specified by -include.
- -idirafter dir
- Search dir for header files, but do it after all directories specified with -I and the standard system directories have been exhausted. dir is treated as a system include directory. If dir begins with "=", then the "=" will be replaced by the sysroot prefix; see --sysroot and -isysroot.
- -iprefix prefix
- Specify prefix as the prefix for subsequent -iwithprefix options. If the prefix represents a directory, you should include the final /.
- -iwithprefix dir
- -iwithprefixbefore dir
- Append dir to the prefix specified previously with -iprefix, and add the resulting directory to the include search path. -iwithprefixbefore puts it in the same place -I would; -iwithprefix puts it where -idirafter would.
- -isysroot dir
- This option is like the --sysroot option, but applies only to header files (except for Darwin targets, where it applies to both header files and libraries). See the --sysroot option for more information.
- -imultilib dir
-
Use dir as a subdirectory of the directory containing
target-specific C++headers.
- -isystem dir
-
Search dir for header files, after all directories specified by
-I but before the standard system directories. Mark it
as a system directory, so that it gets the same special treatment as
is applied to the standard system directories.
If dir begins with "=", then the "=" will be replaced by the sysroot prefix; see --sysroot and -isysroot.
- -iquote dir
-
Search dir only for header files requested with
"#include "file""; they are not searched for
"#include <file>", before all directories specified by
-I and before the standard system directories.
If dir begins with "=", then the "=" will be replaced by the sysroot prefix; see --sysroot and -isysroot.
- -fdirectives-only
-
When preprocessing, handle directives, but do not expand macros.
The option's behavior depends on the -E and -fpreprocessed options.
With -E, preprocessing is limited to the handling of directives such as "#define", "#ifdef", and "#error". Other preprocessor operations, such as macro expansion and trigraph conversion are not performed. In addition, the -dD option is implicitly enabled.
With -fpreprocessed, predefinition of command line and most builtin macros is disabled. Macros such as "__LINE__", which are contextually dependent, are handled normally. This enables compilation of files previously preprocessed with "-E -fdirectives-only".
With both -E and -fpreprocessed, the rules for -fpreprocessed take precedence. This enables full preprocessing of files previously preprocessed with "-E -fdirectives-only".
- -fdollars-in-identifiers
- Accept $ in identifiers.
- -fextended-identifiers
-
Accept universal character names in identifiers. This option is
enabled by default for C99 (and later C standard versions) and C++.
- -fno-canonical-system-headers
- When preprocessing, do not shorten system header paths with canonicalization.
- -fpreprocessed
-
Indicate to the preprocessor that the input file has already been
preprocessed. This suppresses things like macro expansion, trigraph
conversion, escaped newline splicing, and processing of most directives.
The preprocessor still recognizes and removes comments, so that you can
pass a file preprocessed with -C to the compiler without
problems. In this mode the integrated preprocessor is little more than
a tokenizer for the front ends.
-fpreprocessed is implicit if the input file has one of the extensions .i, .ii or .mi. These are the extensions that
GCCuses for preprocessed files created by -save-temps. - -ftabstop=width
- Set the distance between tab stops. This helps the preprocessor report correct column numbers in warnings or errors, even if tabs appear on the line. If the value is less than 1 or greater than 100, the option is ignored. The default is 8.
- -fdebug-cpp
-
This option is only useful for debugging GCC.When used with -E, dumps debugging information about location maps. Every token in the output is preceded by the dump of the map its location belongs to. The dump of the map holding the location of a token would be:
{"P":F</file/path>;"F":F</includer/path>;"L":<line_num>;"C":<col_num>;"S":<system_header_p>;"M":<map_address>;"E":<macro_expansion_p>,"loc":<location>}
When used without -E, this option has no effect.
- -ftrack-macro-expansion[=level]
-
Track locations of tokens across macro expansions. This allows the
compiler to emit diagnostic about the current macro expansion stack
when a compilation error occurs in a macro expansion. Using this
option makes the preprocessor and the compiler consume more
memory. The level parameter can be used to choose the level of
precision of token location tracking thus decreasing the memory
consumption if necessary. Value 0 of level de-activates
this option just as if no -ftrack-macro-expansion was present
on the command line. Value 1 tracks tokens locations in a
degraded mode for the sake of minimal memory overhead. In this mode
all tokens resulting from the expansion of an argument of a
function-like macro have the same location. Value 2 tracks
tokens locations completely. This value is the most memory hungry.
When this option is given no argument, the default parameter value is
2.
Note that "-ftrack-macro-expansion=2" is activated by default.
- -fexec-charset=charset
-
Set the execution character set, used for string and character
constants. The default is UTF-8.charset can be any encoding supported by the system's "iconv" library routine.
- -fwide-exec-charset=charset
-
Set the wide execution character set, used for wide string and
character constants. The default is UTF-32orUTF-16,whichever corresponds to the width of "wchar_t". As with -fexec-charset, charset can be any encoding supported by the system's "iconv" library routine; however, you will have problems with encodings that do not fit exactly in "wchar_t".
- -finput-charset=charset
-
Set the input character set, used for translation from the character
set of the input file to the source character set used by GCC.If the locale does not specify, orGCCcannot get this information from the locale, the default isUTF-8.This can be overridden by either the locale or this command-line option. Currently the command-line option takes precedence if there's a conflict. charset can be any encoding supported by the system's "iconv" library routine.
- -fworking-directory
-
Enable generation of linemarkers in the preprocessor output that will
let the compiler know the current working directory at the time of
preprocessing. When this option is enabled, the preprocessor will
emit, after the initial linemarker, a second linemarker with the
current working directory followed by two slashes. GCCwill use this directory, when it's present in the preprocessed input, as the directory emitted as the current working directory in some debugging information formats. This option is implicitly enabled if debugging information is enabled, but this can be inhibited with the negated form -fno-working-directory. If the -P flag is present in the command line, this option has no effect, since no "#line" directives are emitted whatsoever.
- -fno-show-column
- Do not print column numbers in diagnostics. This may be necessary if diagnostics are being scanned by a program that does not understand the column numbers, such as dejagnu.
- -A predicate=answer
- Make an assertion with the predicate predicate and answer answer. This form is preferred to the older form -A predicate(answer), which is still supported, because it does not use shell special characters.
- -A -predicate=answer
- Cancel an assertion with the predicate predicate and answer answer.
- -dCHARS
-
CHARSis a sequence of one or more of the following characters, and must not be preceded by a space. Other characters are interpreted by the compiler proper, or reserved for future versions ofGCC,and so are silently ignored. If you specify characters whose behavior conflicts, the result is undefined.
-
- M
-
Instead of the normal output, generate a list of #define
directives for all the macros defined during the execution of the
preprocessor, including predefined macros. This gives you a way of
finding out what is predefined in your version of the preprocessor.
Assuming you have no file foo.h, the command
touch foo.h; cpp -dM foo.h
will show all the predefined macros.
If you use -dM without the -E option, -dM is interpreted as a synonym for -fdump-rtl-mach.
- D
- Like M except in two respects: it does not include the predefined macros, and it outputs both the #define directives and the result of preprocessing. Both kinds of output go to the standard output file.
- N
- Like D, but emit only the macro names, not their expansions.
- I
- Output #include directives in addition to the result of preprocessing.
- U
- Like D except that only macros that are expanded, or whose definedness is tested in preprocessor directives, are output; the output is delayed until the use or test of the macro; and #undef directives are also output for macros tested but undefined at the time.
-
- -P
- Inhibit generation of linemarkers in the output from the preprocessor. This might be useful when running the preprocessor on something that is not C code, and will be sent to a program which might be confused by the linemarkers.
- -C
-
Do not discard comments. All comments are passed through to the output
file, except for comments in processed directives, which are deleted
along with the directive.
You should be prepared for side effects when using -C; it causes the preprocessor to treat comments as tokens in their own right. For example, comments appearing at the start of what would be a directive line have the effect of turning that line into an ordinary source line, since the first token on the line is no longer a #.
- -CC
-
Do not discard comments, including during macro expansion. This is
like -C, except that comments contained within macros are
also passed through to the output file where the macro is expanded.
In addition to the side-effects of the -C option, the -CC option causes all C
++-style comments inside a macro to be converted to C-style comments. This is to prevent later use of that macro from inadvertently commenting out the remainder of the source line.The -CC option is generally used to support lint comments.
- -traditional-cpp
-
Try to imitate the behavior of old-fashioned C preprocessors, as
opposed to ISO Cpreprocessors.
- -trigraphs
- Process trigraph sequences.
- -remap
- Enable special code to work around file systems which only permit very short file names, such as MS-DOS.
- --help
- --target-help
- Print text describing all the command-line options instead of preprocessing anything.
- -v
-
Verbose mode. Print out GNU CPP's version number at the beginning of execution, and report the final form of the include path.
- -H
- Print the name of each header file used, in addition to other normal activities. Each name is indented to show how deep in the #include stack it is. Precompiled header files are also printed, even if they are found to be invalid; an invalid precompiled header file is printed with ...x and a valid one with ...! .
- -version
- --version
-
Print out GNU CPP's version number. With one dash, proceed to preprocess as normal. With two dashes, exit immediately.
ENVIRONMENT
This section describes the environment variables that affect howNote that you can also specify places to search using options such as -I, and control dependency output with options like -M. These take precedence over environment variables, which in turn take precedence over the configuration of
- CPATH
- C_INCLUDE_PATH
- CPLUS_INCLUDE_PATH
- OBJC_INCLUDE_PATH
-
Each variable's value is a list of directories separated by a special
character, much like PATH, in which to look for header files. The special character, "PATH_SEPARATOR", is target-dependent and determined atGCCbuild time. For Microsoft Windows-based targets it is a semicolon, and for almost all other targets it is a colon.CPATHspecifies a list of directories to be searched as if specified with -I, but after any paths given with -I options on the command line. This environment variable is used regardless of which language is being preprocessed.
The remaining environment variables apply only when preprocessing the particular language indicated. Each specifies a list of directories to be searched as if specified with -isystem, but after any paths given with -isystem options on the command line.
In all these variables, an empty element instructs the compiler to search its current working directory. Empty elements can appear at the beginning or end of a path. For instance, if the value of
CPATHis ":/special/include", that has the same effect as -I. -I/special/include. - DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT
-
If this variable is set, its value specifies how to output
dependencies for Make based on the non-system header files processed
by the compiler. System header files are ignored in the dependency
output.
The value of
DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUTcan be just a file name, in which case the Make rules are written to that file, guessing the target name from the source file name. Or the value can have the form file target, in which case the rules are written to file file using target as the target name.In other words, this environment variable is equivalent to combining the options -MM and -MF, with an optional -MT switch too.
- SUNPRO_DEPENDENCIES
-
This variable is the same as DEPENDENCIES_OUTPUT(see above), except that system header files are not ignored, so it implies -M rather than -MM. However, the dependence on the main input file is omitted.
- SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
-
If this variable is set, its value specifies a UNIXtimestamp to be used in replacement of the current date and time in the "__DATE__" and "__TIME__" macros, so that the embedded timestamps become reproducible.
The value of
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCHmust be aUNIXtimestamp, defined as the number of seconds (excluding leap seconds) since 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 represented inASCII; identical to the output of @command{date +%s} on GNU/Linux and other systems that support the %s extension in the "date" command.The value should be a known timestamp such as the last modification time of the source or package and it should be set by the build process.
SEE ALSO
gpl(7), gfdl(7), fsf-funding(7), gcc(1), as(1), ld(1), and the Info entries for cpp, gcc, and binutils.COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1987-2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the
(a) The
A GNU Manual
(b) The
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