Unable to compile simple c program in Linux Mint 15

I was having the same problem, and simply installed the g++ package and that fixed the missing include file.

sudo apt-get install g++

I had this situation before:

    rleclerc@fvrwbp01:~# gcc -o tokens tokens.c    tokens.c:1:19: fatal error: stdio.h: No such file or directory    compilation terminated.

You wrote:

    sudo apt-get install build-essintial

There's a typo. Try this instead (I guess you already did something similar):

    sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gcc

and:

    sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends build-essential

Sometimes, proof-reading makes some difference:

    The following NEW packages will be installed:      build-essential dpkg-dev g++ g++-4.7 libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libdpkg-perl libstdc++6-4.7-dev libtimedate-perl linux-libc-dev make    (...)

This fixed the error.

The package name for the C standard library is libc6. Its header files are in the development package: libc6-dev. Some Linux distributions do not have the development package installed. You need to install it yourself:

sudo apt-get install libc6-dev

Why the installation of build-essentials does not resolve the dependencies I don't know. But I think the question wasn't about the installation of build-essentials and maybe it isn't needed at all.

References:

• https://packages.debian.org/en/sid/libc6
• https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-sharedlibs.html#s-sharedlibs-dev
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_C_Library#A_temporary_fork