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Manual: x86_64-linux-gnu-cpp

CPP(1) GNU CPP(1)

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.

-fsearch-include-path[=kind]
Look for input files on the #include path, not just the current directory. This is particularly
useful with C++20 modules, for which both header units and module interface units need to be
compiled directly:

g++ -c -std=c++20 -fmodules -fsearch-include-path bits/stdc++.h bits/std.cc

kind defaults to user, which looks on the #include "..." search path; you can also explicitly
specify system for the "#include <...>" search path.

-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 and -fcanon-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 that 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 " 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 ". 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.)

--embed-dir=dir
Append dir directory to the list of searched directories for "#embed" preprocessing directive or
"__has_embed" macro. There are no default directories for "#embed".

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

-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.

SEE ALSO
gpl(7), gfdl(7), fsf-funding(7), gcc(1), and the Info entries for cpp and gcc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. A
copy of the license is included in the man page gfdl(7). This manual contains no Invariant Sections.
The Front-Cover Texts are (a) (see below), and the Back-Cover Texts are (b) (see below).

(a) The FSF's Front-Cover Text is:

A GNU Manual

(b) The FSF's Back-Cover Text is:

You have freedom to copy and modify this GNU Manual, like GNU
software. Copies published by the Free Software Foundation raise
funds for GNU development.

gcc-15 2026-03-21 CPP(1)

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