hacking into the c compiler?

[madscijr]

:
That said, is there a switch or some hidden setting, so you can type a C program in the editor and get it to compile it to an EXE? 
:

But you want to do this with QB64 editor only?

Use Notepad++, ask B+ about it. You could only do worse than that especially on Linux. On that OS there are Geany and Kate but I don't think they would suit you, that is, if you don't write in Python.

What I think is you want to do like Mr. McNeill coming up with that "direntry.h" or something like that. Just use your favorite text editor for it.

LOL you want to avoid the terminal at all costs... the other programs you listed are going to be more difficult to get around if you prefer to code in any language other than C/C++.

MinGW is actually utilized by QB64 for Windows; trying to make use of it another way produces more hassle. c-Lang is an attempt to turn away from C/C++ like C#, another programming system which is another flavor like fruit juice. Cygwin is a total mess, to make a long story short. The installer behaves just like a package manager (such as Pamac or Synaptics) for a Linux distro, too much complication and work only to have a system that works with Linux-oriented "make". Cygwin and MinGW don't get along as well as they should, which makes it even harder. Pelles C might still be used internally by Purebasic, it was around v4 but now I'm not sure. And M$'s product... LOL if you have at least 10GB of hard disk space to spare wasting time and effort with that baby...

Taking this in another direction, is there a way to see the "intermediate" C code that is generated when it compiles your QB64 program to an EXE? It would be interesting just to look at, to see what the equivalent C code looks like...

Yes I thought I saw this in your quote! Look for the folders which are at the same level as "c" and "help", but excluding those two, part of "qb64/internal". I think there's also a "source" folder which contains the results of building QB64 itself.

Thanks for all the info. 
Basically, I just want to use whatever C compiler is bundled with QB64 to compile C programs. 
While it would be most convenient to edit the C directly in the QB64 editor, and compile & run right from there, I can use Notepad++ or whatever to edit, and compile however you can get QB64 to compile. 
But if it can't be made to do that, or one of those other compilers/IDEs is better (I need to read your notes on those when back at the PC) then I'll give that a try. 
Also thanks for clueing me in to where the C code our QB64 is translated into resides, I'll definitely give that a look too.