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I want to run a c program on ubuntu 18.04, on a virtual machine, and I get this error:

./test.c: line 3: syntax error near unexpected token `('
./test.c: line 3: `void main(int argc, char** argv)'

I compiled and ran the file like this:

gcc -o test test.c
./test.c

I gave permission to the folder using:

sudo chmod a+rwx

I've searched online, and what I know is that ( is a special character in the shell/terminal but I could not understand/find a way to use it when I write code without error.

Can someone please help me solve this problem?

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In gcc -o test test.c the test after -o flag is the name of actual executable, so you need to run ./test. When you do ./test.c the shell will attempt to read your C source code ( which is just text file ) as shell script and execute it according to current shell's syntax ( i.e., shell tries to read it a shell script, not as compiled C code).

On side note, please don't use test as name for executable. There's already /usr/bin/test and that can lead to confusion later. And overall using system executable names for personal programs is just bad practice

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