I print out the output of C preprocessor by using

gcc -E a.c

The output contains many lines like

# 1 "a.c"
# 1 "<built-in>"
# 1 "<command-line>"
# 1 "a.c"
# 1 "c:\\mingw\\bin\\../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../include/stdio.h" 1 3
# 19 "c:\\mingw\\bin\\../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../include/stdio.h" 3
# 1 "c:\\mingw\\bin\\../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../include/_mingw.h" 1 3
# 31 "c:\\mingw\\bin\\../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../include/_mingw.h" 3
       
# 32 "c:\\mingw\\bin\\../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../include/_mingw.h" 3
# 20 "c:\\mingw\\bin\\../lib/gcc/mingw32/4.5.0/../../../../include/stdio.h" 2 3

I've never seen this kind of syntax in C. Can someone explain what this is doing?

c gcc c-preprocessor
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