Appendix A. Installing and Using C Tools

Before you can begin programming with C, you'll need to make sure that you have the proper tools installed. At the very least, you need a text editor, a console or terminal window, and a compiler. The first two are already on your computer, and the third is freely available online. Still, we prefe and recommend that you use an integrated development environment (IDE) such as Dev-C++ for Windows and Xcode for Mac OS X. Both are free, and easy to use.

In this appendix, we'll go through quick demonstrations on how to use both applications. Then we'll quickly touch on what options our Unix and Linux friends have. After that, we'll introduce you to the popular GDB debugging tool. Finally, we'll mention a couple of other applications that might be of interest to you as you sink your teeth into C programming.