If you have a fully ANSI-compliant set of #include files and C libraries, then compiling nrtodp should be simple. The following line should be sufficient: cc -DLIBRARY_DIR=\"your library dir here\" -O -s -o nrtodp nrtodp.c Type the \" exactly as indicated, but replace the phrase 'your library dir here' with the directory in which you will install nrtodp.dat. Depending on your compiler, the option -DANSI might also be required in the above. However, not all environments have ANSI string functions. The ones most likely to be a problem are strchr, strrchr and strstr. In some cases, strchr and strrchr are called, respectively, index and rindex. So if you receive an error message about "_strchr" and "_strrchr" being undefined, try the following: cc -Dstrchr=index -Dstrrchr=rindex -DLIBRARY_DIR=\"your library dir here\" -O -s -o nrtodp nrtodp.c It is possible that the function strstr is not present in any form. For convenience, files implementing strchr, strrchr, and strstr are present in this directory. These sources are not part of Numerical Recipes, but are from the second Berkeley networking distribution. Please note the conditions on their use and redistribution. At this point, compiling advice becomes heavily system-dependent, so we refer you to your local experts.