Documentation Overview

The HP C/ANSI C compiler and related documentation is available for users of the HP C Developer’s Bundle. This documentation is available both online, and in printed copy. Online documentation is located at http://docs.hp.com, and is viewable using your any of the available web browser.

The HP C documentation consists of:

HP C/HP-UX Release Notes
HP C/HP-UX Programmer’s Guide
HP C/HP-UX Reference Manual
HP-UX Floating Point Guide
HP C/HP-UX Online Help
C Compiler Documentation
HP C/HP-UX Release Notes

The HP C/HP-UX Release Notes provides release-specific information such as new feature summaries, installation instructions, and known defects. In addition, the Release Notes contains this documentation overview to help you orient yourself regarding available documentation. The release notes are also available online in the text file in the directory:

/opt/ansic/newconfig/RelNotes/

Printed Documentation

Printed versions of Hewlett-Packard documents are available for ordering. Use the man manuals command for details on the documents available for ordering. See also the HP documentation web site http://docs.hp.com and the HP C/HP-UX web site at http://www.hp.com/go/C.

Listed below are the documents most closely related to use of the ANSI C Compiler:

HP C/HP-UX Reference Manual
Provides reference material for HP C as implemented on HP 9000 systems. This document is based on the ANSI C standard 9899-1990, and it discusses the implementations and extensions unique to HP C on HP-UX. It does not replicate the ANSI C standard and you are referred to the standard, for any finer points not covered.
HP C/HP-UX Programmer’s Guide
Contains a detailed discussion about selected C topics. Included are discussions of data type sizes and alignment modes, comparisons between HP C and other languages, and information on 64-bit programming, optimization, threads, and parallel processing.
HP-UX Floating-Point Guide
Describes how floating-point arithmetic is implemented and discusses how floating-point behavior affects the programmer. It also provides reference information about the C and Fortran math libraries.
HP C Online Help
The C compiler online help is a series of html files containing a combination of reference and how-to information, including the following:
- What is HP C?
- Program organization
- Compiling & running HP C programs
- Optimizing HP C programs
- Parallel options & pragmas
- Data types & declarations
- Expressions & operators
- Statements
- Preprocessing directives
- Calling other languages
- Programming for portability
- Migrating C programs to HP-UX
- Error message descriptions

Before You Begin

Before you begin using HP C Online Help, you should review the following environment variables.

You must set the DISPLAY environment variable to a (graphical mode) value that can accommodate the display of an HTML browser. You may set the BROWSER environment variable to point to the location of your HTML browser. If you do not set the BROWSER environment variable, the compiler automatically runs the browser located in /opt/ns-navgold/bin/netscape or /opt/ns-communicator/netscape.

You may set the CROOTDIR environment variable to set the root directory of the online help source. If CROOTDIR is not set, the URL of the online help will be file:/opt/ansic/html/guide/${LOCALE}/c_index.html ; this is assuming that compiler binaries are located in /opt/ansic/bin.

Accessing HP C Online Help

To access the online help, on a system where the HP C compiler is installed, enter the following:

/opt/ansic/bin/cc +help

This command will launch a web browser, displaying the index file for the HP C online help system. The actual file location of the html help is

file:/${CROOTDIR}/html/guide/${LOCALE}/c_index.html.

If the environment variable CROOTDIR is not set, path will be formed relative to the compiler’s root directory; this is usually /opt/ansic. See for more information on setting the CROOTDIR environment variable.

If the browser path set by the BROWSER environment variable does not exist, or if the default browser paths /opt/ns-navgold/bin/netscape or /opt/ns-communicator/netscape do not exist, a message is displayed telling you that the BROWSER environment variable must be set properly.

X-Motif CDE Help is Obsolete

Previous versions of the HP C compiler, when installed on the X-Motif CDE environment, included a CDE version of the online help. This and the accompanying text-based charhelp will no longer be updated with the ANSI C compiler. If you want to view online help, please use the HP C HTML Online Help.

Related Documentation

This documentation is available on the HP-UX 11.11 Instant Information CD-ROM and onz the web site http://docs.hp.com.

Parallel Programming Guide for HP-UX Systems
Describes efficient parallel programming techniques available using HP Fortran 90, HP C, and HP aC++ on HP-UX. This document is also available online at http://docs.hp.com.
HP-UX 64-bit Porting and Transition Guide
Describes the changes you need to make to compile, link, and run programs in 64-bit mode. This document is also available online at http://docs.hp.com and in the Postscript file /opt/ansic/newconfig/RelNotes/64bitTrans.bk.ps.
HP PA-RISC Compiler Optimization Technology White Paper
Describes the benefits of using optimization. This white paper is available online in the PostScript file: /opt/langtools/newconfig/white_papers/optimize.ps.
HP-UX Linker and Libraries Online User Guide
Replaces the manual Programming on HP-UX . To access the HP Linker and Libraries Online User Guide, use the ld +help command, or visit http://docs.hp.com.
HP Assembler Reference Manual
Describes the use of the Precision Architecture RISC (PA-RISC) Assembler on HP-UX systems. Describes PA-RISC Assembler directives, pseudo-operations, and how to run the Assembler on HP-UX.
HP-UX Reference Manual
The reference manual pages, or man pages, are available online (use the command man man for more information), and are also available on the CD-ROM. You may also access this manual online by visiting http://docs.hp.com.
HP-UX Software Transition Kit (STK)
Enables the application developer to easily transition software from HP-UX 10. x to either the 32-bit or the 64-bit version of HP-UX 11.0. The kit is available free of charge on the HP-UX 11.0 Application Release CD-ROM, or from the web at http://www.software.hp.com/STK/index.html.

HP WDB Debugger Documentation

HP WDB is the HP-supported implementation of the GDB debugger. Refer to the README file in the directory /opt/langtools/wdb/doc for information on the documentation provided with the debugger. See also the web site http://www.hp.com/go/debuggers.

HP CXperf Documentation

CXperf Command Reference
Provides both introductory and reference information for using the CXPerf performance analyzer.
CXperf User’s Guide
Provides information on how to use the CXperf performance analysis tool. See the website http://www.hp.com/go/cxperf for more information.