porting to Windows, 16/32-bit?

Hi, I am a C noob, just starting to learn. I wrote a couple simple programs in my Debian Linux environment and I'm trying to port them to Windows. I created a 16-bit .exe with gcc, but Windows XP apparently won't run any executables lower than 32-bit! Any suggestions? Is there some kind of program that can convert 16 to 32-bit? Do I have to rewrite/recompile my code in a Wintel environment using a Wintel compiler that has the ability to compile to 32-bit executables? Thanks for any suggestions...

EDIT:
Ok, I'm an idiot, forgot C is platform-specific, will recompile in windows with some sort of free GNU compiler...(I'm coming from more of a Java background although I am still a bit of a Java noob as well.)
However I'm still curious as to what the differences in code might be? For example, do you have to link to different libraries in Windows?

I'm not sure I understand your queston but AFAIK, the only MS OS to not support 16bit apps is Windows XP Pro x64 edition. MS claims that the security issues are overwhelming if they support 16 bit apps on this OS.

All other OS's up to and including XP PRO support DOS (Console) apps thru their own Virtual DOS Machine (VDM). Whereas Win16 GUI apps share a common VDM

Win16 apps can also call 32bit API's thru a process called thunking

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Originally Posted by BobS0327

All other OS's up to and including XP PRO support DOS (Console) apps thru their own Virtual DOS Machine (VDM). Whereas Win16 GUI apps share a common VDM

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Thanks for your reply, that is interesting and good to know! :)
I am slightly more familiar with the Linux environment than Windows...but I wanted to make sure there wasn't a problem with my source...does C source sometimes vary from platform to platform?

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does C source sometimes vary from platform to platform?

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From a GUI perspective, the code changes from platform to platform, from Windows to Linux, to Mac, PDA etc. The amount of change is dependent upon what you are developing and the approach you use. Even a cross platform product such as wxWidgets does require some modification for portability.

There are standards such as ANSI for non GUI development. Unfortunately, almost all of my work is GUI in nature. So, I'm really not qualified to expound on the standards. That's best left to the other more experienced standards folks.

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Originally Posted by BobS0327

There are standards such as ANSI for non GUI development.

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Actually, my code is based on the book I am learning from; The C Programming Language (second edition) which supposedly is ANSI compliant. In any case, I think the best thing would be for me to take my source and try compiling and running it using a wintel compiler. Thanks again for your helpful info :)

If the code you're trying to compile doesn't use the X-windowing system, you should be able to compile it under Windows with little or no change with gcc or Dev-C++ or cygwin.

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do you have to link to different libraries in Windows?

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For the standard libraries, no. -lm links the math library on most gcc systems.

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Originally Posted by dwks

If the code you're trying to compile doesn't use the X-windowing system, you should be able to compile it under Windows with little or no change with gcc or Dev-C++ or cygwin.

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Thanks for the info...I downloaded Dev-C++ and so far I like it...however, when I double click the exe my program comes up for a second then gets killed. I have to navigate to it in DOS to get it to come up correctly.
Is there any way (add a line of code maybe) to make the exe stop long enough for the user to be able to read the program's output? Or any other way to modify the exe?

http://faq.cprogramming.com/cgi-bin/...&id=1043284385

dwks --
Cool, thanks :)

This worked as kind of a quick and dirty fix:

Code:

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#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
  int ch;
  printf ("Press [Enter] to continue");
  while ((ch = getchar()) != '\n' && ch != EOF);
  return(0);
}

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