Undefined reference to main - collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Question

I\'m trying to compile a program (called es3), but, when I write from terminal:

gcc es3.c -o es3

it appears this message:

/usr/l         


        

Answer 1

Executable file needs a main function. See below hello world demo.

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
        printf("Hello world!\n");
        return 0;
}

As you can see there is a main function. if you don't have this main function, ld will report "undefined reference to main' "

check my result:

$ cat es3.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
    printf("Hello world!\n");
    return 0;
}
$ gcc -Wall -g -c es3.c
$ gcc -Wall -g es3.o -o es3
~$ ./es3
Hello world! 

please use $ objdump -t es3.o to check if there is a main symbol. Below is my result.

$ objdump -t es3.o

es3.o:     file format elf32-i386

SYMBOL TABLE:
00000000 l    df *ABS*  00000000 es3.c
00000000 l    d  .text  00000000 .text
00000000 l    d  .data  00000000 .data
00000000 l    d  .bss   00000000 .bss
00000000 l    d  .debug_abbrev  00000000 .debug_abbrev
00000000 l    d  .debug_info    00000000 .debug_info
00000000 l    d  .debug_line    00000000 .debug_line
00000000 l    d  .rodata        00000000 .rodata
00000000 l    d  .debug_frame   00000000 .debug_frame
00000000 l    d  .debug_loc     00000000 .debug_loc
00000000 l    d  .debug_pubnames        00000000 .debug_pubnames
00000000 l    d  .debug_aranges 00000000 .debug_aranges
00000000 l    d  .debug_str     00000000 .debug_str
00000000 l    d  .note.GNU-stack        00000000 .note.GNU-stack
00000000 l    d  .comment       00000000 .comment
00000000 g     F .text  0000002b main
00000000         *UND*  00000000 puts