conbrio

As I understand it, compilers generally generate code in the following manner: source code>object file(s)(which might be linked)>final executable in machine code.

Now, providing that a source file is compiled for a certain CPU architecture (eg, x86) why shouldn't a file compiled on Windows work on a Linux system, and vise versa?

DaWei

No problem if your code is completely portable; however, you won't be able to do much if you need to get at the hardware (keyboard, display, etc.), as different OSs have differently written drivers and interfaces that you are dealing with if you use the implementation specific libraries..

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Infinite Recursion

You may be using platform dependent libraries, APIs, objects, etc. For instance, you can't run code that references windows.h on a Linux machine.

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java_roshan

As correctly stated by the other two posts, I second that.

Also, just notice, while generating the executable machine code, C/C++ compilers wud basically generate an .exe file and as you know very well, .exe files can only be run in windows. (Wine is something different in this case)

Also, the same in Linux wud be some .o file to a "a.out" file providing the output.

In short, the executable made has code that can be understood by that particular operating system.

However, Java becomes the master of all ...becoz, it generates a class file on executing it and that only needs an interpreter on the machine it is running...

Happy programming....!!!

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DaWei

This may be misleading. Compilers (the linker/locator associated with them, actually) generally use an extension compatible with the platform they're designed to support, as you mention regarding the .out extension.

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