Sun Studio 12: C User's Guide

B.2.6 -c

Directs the C compiler to suppress linking with ld(1) and to produce a .o file for each source file. You can explicitly name a single object file using the-o option. When the compiler produces object code for each .i or .c input file, it always creates an object (.o) file in the current working directory. If you suppress the linking step, you also suppress the removal of the object files.