compile error question

[Claudio Bley]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim M <msg124@hotmail.com> writes:

    Jim> I try this with "gcc myfile.c -o myfile" i get the iostream.h not
    Jim> found. If i do "gcc myfile.C -o myfile" i get the "storage size of
    Jim> 'cube' is not known. ..redefinition of 'char *cube[]"..  thanks, J

    Jim> #include <iostream.h> char *cube[]; int main() { int i; while (0)
    Jim> { i = 0; while (cube[i]){ cout << cube[i++]; } } }

    Jim> char* cube[] = {"\n\ ____\n\ / /|\n\ /___/ |\n\ | | /\n\
    Jim> |___|/\n",

    Jim> "\ ___\n\ | |\n\ |___|\n\ | |\n\ |___|\n",

    Jim> "\ ____ \n\ |\\ \\ \n\ | \\___\\ \n\ \\ | | \n\ \\|___| \n",

    Jim> "\ /\\ \n\ / \\ \n\ |\ /| \n\ | \/ | \n\ \\ | / \n\ \\|/ \n",

    Jim> NULL };

    Jim> _________________________________________________________________
    Jim> Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at
    Jim> http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp

I don't know whether somebody already told you - and it can be sometimes
confusing ;-), but you're writing in C++ mode, just use the C++ compiler
backend: g++

$ g++ -o myfile myfile.C

As you could have easily looked up in the man page of gcc it is
substantially which file extension you choose for your source file - or you
have to specify which language gcc should expect.

To quote the manual:

       .c    C source; preprocess, compile, assemble
       .C    C++ source; preprocess, compile, assemble
       .cc   C++ source; preprocess, compile, assemble

As you can see .C implies that your file contains C++ code - .c does not
and that's why you are getting the first error. 

Additionally, you should use #include <iostream> (without the .h unless you
know that you explicitely need the .h file).

Then, you can't declare cube twice - this is NOT allowed. You just want to
say that theres somewhere a variable of a specific type, so you need to
declare cube extern in the first instance:

extern char* cube[];

Also, you should use double backslashes in strings globally in order to
express one single backslash (I got unknown escape sequence errors). And,
maybe it's only a matter of style but I initialise string arrays like this:

char *cube[] = {"\n"
		" 1st line \n"
		" 2nd line \n", NULL };

I think it's better than escaping newlines (I also got unknown escape
sequence errors on some of your line breaks).

HTH
Claudio