Ubuntu Manpage: cpp - The C Preprocessor

Provided by: cpp-11_11.4.0-1ubuntu1~22.04_amd64

NAME

       cpp - The C Preprocessor

SYNOPSIS

       cpp [-Dmacro[=defn]...] [-Umacro]
           [-Idir...] [-iquotedir...]
           [-M|-MM] [-MG] [-MF filename]
           [-MP] [-MQ target...]
           [-MT target...]
           infile [[-o] outfile]

       Only the most useful options are given above; see below for a more complete list of preprocessor-specific
       options.  In addition, cpp accepts most gcc driver options, which are not listed here.  Refer to the GCC
       documentation for details.

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++, and Objective-C source code. In the past, it
has been abused as a general text processor. It will choke on input which does not obey C's lexical
rules. For example, apostrophes will be interpreted as the beginning of character constants, and cause
errors. Also, you cannot rely on it preserving characteristics of the input which are not significant to
C-family languages. If a Makefile is preprocessed, all the hard tabs will be removed, and the Makefile
will not work.

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 (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++ style comments instead of native language comments, and keeping macros simple.

Wherever possible, you should use a preprocessor geared to the language you are writing in. Modern
versions of the GNU assembler have macro facilities. Most high level programming languages have their
own conditional compilation and inclusion mechanism. If all else fails, try a true general text
processor, such as GNU M4.

C preprocessors vary in some details. This manual discusses the GNU C preprocessor, which provides a
small superset of the features of ISO Standard C. In its default mode, the GNU C preprocessor does not
do a few things required by the standard. These are features which are rarely, if ever, used, and may
cause surprising changes to the meaning of a program which does not expect them. To get strict ISO
Standard C, you should use the -std=c90, -std=c99, -std=c11 or -std=c17 options, depending on which
version of the standard you want. To get all the mandatory diagnostics, you must also use -pedantic.

This manual describes the behavior of the ISO preprocessor. To minimize gratuitous differences, where
the ISO preprocessor's behavior does not conflict with traditional semantics, the traditional
preprocessor should behave the same way. The various differences that do exist are detailed in the
section Traditional Mode.

For clarity, unless noted otherwise, references to CPP in this manual refer to GNU CPP.

OPTIONS

The cpp command 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. If either file is omitted, it means the same as if - had been specified for
that file. You can also use the -o outfile option to specify the output 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 is 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 should 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.

-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.

-undef
Do not predefine any system-specific or GCC-specific macros. The standard predefined macros remain
defined.

-pthread
Define additional macros required for using the POSIX threads library. You should use this option
consistently for both compilation and linking. This option is supported on GNU/Linux targets, most
other Unix derivatives, and also on x86 Cygwin and MinGW targets.

-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 is still 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 appears in -MM dependency output.

-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 send preprocessed output.

When used with the driver options -MD or -MMD, -MF overrides the default dependency output file.

If file is -, then the dependencies are written to stdout.

-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.

-Mno-modules
Disable dependency generation for compiled module interfaces.

-MP This option instructs CPP to 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 CPP takes 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 sets 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.

-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 GCC uses for preprocessed files created by -save-temps.

-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 and extended characters 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.

-fmax-include-depth=depth
Set the maximum depth of the nested #include. The default is 200.

-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.

-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. 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.

-fmacro-prefix-map=old=new
When preprocessing files residing in directory old, expand the "__FILE__" and "__BASE_FILE__" macros
as if the files resided in directory new instead. This can be used to change an absolute path to a
relative path by using . for new which can result in more reproducible builds that are location
independent. This option also affects "__builtin_FILE()" during compilation. See also
-ffile-prefix-map.

-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
one of UTF-32BE, UTF-32LE, UTF-16BE, or UTF-16LE, whichever corresponds to the width of "wchar_t" and
the big-endian or little-endian byte order being used for code generation. 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, or GCC cannot get this information
from the locale, the default is UTF-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 let the compiler know the current
working directory at the time of preprocessing. When this option is enabled, the preprocessor emits,
after the initial linemarker, a second linemarker with the current working directory followed by two
slashes. GCC uses 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.

-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.

-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.

-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.

-traditional
-traditional-cpp
Try to imitate the behavior of pre-standard C preprocessors, as opposed to ISO C preprocessors.

Note that GCC does not otherwise attempt to emulate a pre-standard C compiler, and these options are
only supported with the -E switch, or when invoking CPP explicitly.

-trigraphs
Support ISO C trigraphs. These are three-character sequences, all starting with ??, that are defined
by ISO C to stand for single characters. For example, ??/ stands for \, so '??/n' is a character
constant for a newline.

By default, GCC ignores trigraphs, but in standard-conforming modes it converts them. See the -std
and -ansi options.

-remap
Enable special code to work around file systems which only permit very short file names, such as MS-
DOS.

-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 ...! .

-dletters
Says to make debugging dumps during compilation as specified by letters. The flags documented here
are those relevant to the preprocessor. Other letters are interpreted by the compiler proper, or
reserved for future versions of GCC, and so are silently ignored. If you specify letters whose
behavior conflicts, the result is undefined.

-dM 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

shows all the predefined macros.

-dD Like -dM 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.

-dN Like -dD, but emit only the macro names, not their expansions.

-dI Output #include directives in addition to the result of preprocessing.

-dU Like -dD 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.

-fdebug-cpp
This option is only useful for debugging GCC. When used from CPP or with -E, it dumps debugging
information about location maps. Every token in the output is preceded by the dump of the map its
location belongs to.

When used from GCC without -E, this option has no effect.

-I dir
-iquote dir
-isystem dir
-idirafter dir
Add the directory dir to the list of directories to be searched for header files during
preprocessing.

If dir begins with = or $SYSROOT, then the = or $SYSROOT is replaced by the sysroot prefix; see
--sysroot and -isysroot.

Directories specified with -iquote apply only to the quote form of the directive, "#include "file"".
Directories specified with -I, -isystem, or -idirafter apply to lookup for both the "#include "file""
and "#include <file>" directives.

You can specify any number or combination of these options on the command line to search for header
files in several directories. The lookup order is as follows:

1. For the quote form of the include directive, the directory of the current file is searched first.

2. For the quote form of the include directive, the directories specified by -iquote options are
searched in left-to-right order, as they appear on the command line.

3. Directories specified with -I options are scanned in left-to-right order.

4. Directories specified with -isystem options are scanned in left-to-right order.

5. Standard system directories are scanned.

6. Directories specified with -idirafter options are scanned in left-to-right order.

You can use -I to override a system header file, substituting your own version, since these
directories are searched before the standard system header file directories. However, you should not
use this option to add directories that contain vendor-supplied system header files; use -isystem for
that.

The -isystem and -idirafter options also mark the directory as a system directory, so that it gets
the same special treatment that is applied to the standard system directories.

If a standard system include directory, or a directory specified with -isystem, is also specified
with -I, the -I option is ignored. The directory is still searched but as a system directory at its
normal position in the system include chain. This is to ensure that GCC's procedure to fix buggy
system headers and the ordering for the "#include_next" directive are not inadvertently changed. If
you really need to change the search order for system directories, use the -nostdinc and/or -isystem
options.

-I- Split the include path. This option has been deprecated. Please use -iquote instead for -I
directories before the -I- and remove the -I- option.

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"". There is no way to override this effect of -I-.

-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.

-nostdinc
Do not search the standard system directories for header files. Only the directories explicitly
specified with -I, -iquote, -isystem, and/or -idirafter 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.)

-Wcomment
-Wcomments
Warn whenever a comment-start sequence /* appears in a /* comment, or whenever a backslash-newline
appears in a // comment. This warning is enabled by -Wall.

-Wtrigraphs
Warn if any trigraphs are encountered that might change the meaning of the program. Trigraphs within
comments are not warned about, except those that would form escaped newlines.

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.

-Wundef
Warn if an undefined identifier is evaluated in an "#if" directive. Such identifiers are replaced
with zero.

-Wexpansion-to-defined
Warn whenever defined is encountered in the expansion of a macro (including the case where the macro
is expanded by an #if directive). Such usage is not portable. This warning is also enabled by
-Wpedantic and -Wextra.

-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 also warns 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 the preprocessor
reports 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

-Wno-endif-labels
Do not warn whenever an "#else" or an "#endif" are followed by text. This sometimes happens in older
programs with code of the form

#if FOO
...
#else FOO
...
#endif FOO

The second and third "FOO" should be in comments. This warning is on by default.

ENVIRONMENT

This section describes the environment variables that affect how CPP operates. You can use them to
specify directories or prefixes to use when searching for include files, or to control dependency output.

Note 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 GCC.

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 at GCC build time. For Microsoft Windows-based targets it is a semicolon, and for almost
all other targets it is a colon.

CPATH specifies 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 CPATH is ":/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_OUTPUT can 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 UNIX timestamp 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_EPOCH must be a UNIX timestamp, defined as the number of seconds (excluding
leap seconds) since 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 represented in ASCII; identical to the output of "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.

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