What does "-I" and "-L" mean when prepended to a path?

Question

When installing openssl using brew, a part of the response is outputted:

For compilers to find openssl you may need to set:
  export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/opt/openssl/lib"
  export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include"

and the following could be used to compile a C++ file.

g++ file.cpp -I/usr/local/opt/openssl/include

What is the -I and the -L for?

`-I` https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31455042 `-L` https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15836423 — Drew Dormann, Jul 26 '19 at 17:57

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 26 '19 at 17:53

7

-L means the path is a dir which contains Libraries for linking (adds the path to the set of dirs the linker will search)

-I means there are header files to Include in the given dir.

answered Jul 26 '19 at 17:53

Richard Barber

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What does "-I" and "-L" mean when prepended to a path?

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