Quick Fix: Run C# Code on Linux with Mono

Running C# (or C-Sharp) on Linux is pretty trivial unless you depend on something that's a Windows specific library. I just came a cross a tiny bash script (rather alias) I wrote when I was a teacher, since I also taught basic programming with C#. Since I'm cleaning up an old hard drive I stumbled across a small script I wrote for that.

Reading the code wasn't an issue, but I was running Linux (obviously) which may or may not have been sanctioned by the institution I was working for. I recall it wasn't specifically forbidden.

So what to do when a student approaches you or when you have to check their source code? Easy! Install Mono, run the code (that they wrote in Visual Studio Whatever).

Then, I created this little script and put it in my ~/scripts directory and called it csrun:

#!/bin/bash
# build and run C# on linux

# get basename of file
fbname=$(basename "$1" .cs)
# compile and run with mono
gmcs $1 && mono $fbname.exe

My ~/scripts directory obviously was in my PATH:

Bottom line of my .bashrc:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/jonathan/scripts

Now I could run their source code easily or help them debug it when they sent it to me.

In the end it's a matter of convenience, because I didn't want to start the Mono IDE or whatever to check their code, but use my favourite editor and run it on the terminal.