Invoking GCC as "cc" versus "gcc"

Question

I am aware that on most GNU/Linux systems, GCC can be invoked by the name "cc" from the command line (as opposed to "gcc"). What I am wondering is if there is any difference in GCC's behavior when it is invoked one way versus the other.

For example, I know that invoking GCC through the name "g++" instead of "gcc" causes GCC to behave differently (it treats .c files as C++ source and links-in the C++ standard library). Is there any similar difference in behavior between "gcc" versus "cc"?

EDIT: None of the answers received so far gave a definitive "yes" or "no" as to whether GCC will behave differently if invoked one way versus the other. However, the idea given to dive into the source to check it's behavior lead me down that path. Based upon what I found there, I now believe that the answer is:

No. GCC behaves the same regardless of whether it is called via "gcc" or "cc".

Answer 1

On my mac from man gcc:

In Apple's version of GCC, both cc and gcc are actually symbolic links to a compiler named like gcc-version. Similarly, c++ and g++ are links to a compiler named like g++-version.

Based on that I would assume that cc and gcc behave the same way.

Answer 2

Considering this is coming from UNIX, I'd say that "cc" is the generic name and "gcc" is the actual compiler. i.e. "gcc" provides "cc" so a program looking for "cc" would find and use "cc", blissfully ignorant of the actual compiler being used.

Also, UNIX programs should be ignorant of the actual name used to call them (think Windows Desktop shortcuts -- it doesn't make sense to check what the shortcut was called), so, no, "gcc" and "cc" do the same thing if "cc" is a link to "gcc".

Unless, of course, "cc" is not a symlink but a shellscript calling gcc.

Answer 3

It looks to me that cc (link to some old SUS specification) is intended to be the vendor-neutral interface to the system's compiler. It's marked as legacy:

The c89 utility provides an interface to the ISO C standard, but the cc utility accepts an unspecified dialect of the C language: it may be Standard C, common-usage C or some other variant. Portable C programs should be written to conform to the ISO C standard and compiled with c89.

POSIX has a utility called c99 which i believe is the successor of c89. It says

The c99 utility is based on the c89 utility originally introduced in the ISO POSIX-2:1993 standard.

Some of the changes from c89 include the modification to the contents of the Standard Libraries section to account for new headers and options; for example, added to the -l rt operand, and the -l trace operand added for the Tracing functions.

I'm not really familiar to all those different Standards, but it looks like the more recent SUSv3 (Posix 2004) and the yet more recent Posix2008 (doesn't seem to have a SUS number yet) do not specify a utility called cc anymore, but only the utility called c99. Incidentally, my linux system (archlinux) contains a manpage of c99 but not c89, but only contains a utility called cc, but neither c89 nor c99. Much confusion in there :)

Answer 4

cc is just the UNIX way of calling the compiler, it will work on all Unices.

Answer 5

Nothing in the gcc documentation indicates that gcc would behave any differently if it's executable name is not gcc but cc. The GNU Fortran compiler even mentions that:

A version of the gcc command (which also might be installed as the system's cc command)

Answer 6

For grins, I just traced down how argv[0] is used from within gcc (main.c -> top_lev.c -> opts.c -> langhooks.c) and it appears that argv[0] is currently used for nothing more than giving malloc something to report when it fails. There doesn't appear to be any behavior change if argv[0] is anything other than gcc.

Answer 7

I've been using UNIX since 1983, and the C compiler back then was called cc. Irt's nice to think that maybe a makefile I wrote back then could still work on the latest Linux distro today...

Answer 8

Although the question has been asnwered, but I had the same doubt today and i tried to find on my own:

$ which cc
 /usr/bin/cc
$file /usr/bin/cc
 /usr/bin/cc: symbolic link to '/etc/alternatives/cc'
$file /etc/alternatives/cc
 /etc/alternatives/cc: symbolic link to '/usr/bin/gcc'
$which gcc
 /usr/bin/gcc

So, basically cc points to gcc.
You could also check using cc -v and gcc -v
If they print out the same thing, that means they are exactly the same.