Reputation: 5297
I was trying today to check an Answer and I realized that if i use codeblocks (with gcc) i have to treat the error different from the command line (Ubuntu Linux) using gcc.
The program is like this:
#include<stdio.h>
#include<math.h>
int main(void){
double len,x,y =0;
int n=123456;
len=floor(log10(abs(n))) + 1;
x = n / pow(10, len / 2);
y = n - x * pow(10, len / 2);
printf("First Half = %f",x);
printf("\nSecond Half = %f",y);
return 0;
}
And if i try to compile it i get:
error: implicit declaration of function ‘abs’ [-Werror=implicit-function-declaration]|
So here is the funny thing. I added -lm to the Compiler => global compiler => settings => Other settings, but the result is the same.
It is working only if i include stdlib.h.
#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
#include<math.h>
int main(void){
double len,x,y =0;
int n=123456;
len=floor(log10(abs(n))) + 1;
x = n / pow(10, len / 2);
y = n - x * pow(10, len / 2);
printf("First Half = %f",x);
printf("\nSecond Half = %f",y);
return 0;
}
But if I use command line (in terminal) using the comand:
gcc program.c -o program -lm
The program compiled successfully.
My question: Why happens this ? I did a research on interent and found that some people says the abs function is declared in stdlib.h, not math.h. but if i compile in command line (without including stdlib.h) with -lm works. I'm confused.
Upvotes: 3
Views: 215
Reputation:
Short answer: Try
gcc -Wall -Wextra -pedantic -o program -lm
or
gcc -Wall -Wextra -Werror -pedantic -o program -lm
to make it fail on warnings as Codeblocks seems to do.
Long answer: Linking to a library is a completely different matter than including a header file. In C, for historic reasons, it is "allowed" to use a function that is not declared. The compiler in this case assumes a function returning int
and taking whatever arguments you give it. For abs()
, these assumptions hold. So later, the linker finds the function when linking with libm
and everything is fine.
But there are quite some catches: First you will miss simple typos if you don't enable warnings. Second, the compiler is unable to check the arguments you give -> crashing program ahead. And even more problems are to expect if the function does return something other than int
.
abs()
is declared in stdlib.h
. To use it, include this header. And always enable compiler warnings (Codeblocks obviously does it for you).
Upvotes: 5