6.

087 Lecture 4 January 14, 2010

Review

Control ow

I/O Standard I/O String I/O File I/O

Blocks

Blocks combine multiple statements into a single unit. Can be used when a single statement is expected. Creates a local scope (variables declared inside are local

to the block).

Blocks can be nested.

{ i n t x =0; { i n t y =0; / both x and y v i s i b l e /

}
/ only x v i s i b l e / }

Conditional blocks

if ... else..else if

is used for conditional branching of execution

i f ( cond ) { / code executed i f cond i s t r u e / } else { / code executed i f cond i s f a l s e / }

Conditional blocks

switch..case

is used to test multiple conditions (more efcient than if else ladders).

switch ( o p t ) { case A : / execute i f o p t == A / break ;
case B :
case C :
/ execute i f o p t == B | | o p t == C / default : }

Iterative blocks

while loop tests condition before execution of the block. do..while loop tests condition after execution of the block. for loop provides initialization, testing and iteration together.

6.087 Lecture 4 January 14, 2010

Review

Control ow

I/O Standard I/O String I/O File I/O

goto

goto allows you to jump unconditionally to arbitrary part of

your code (within the same function).

the location is identied using a label. a label is a named location in the code. It has the same

form as a variable followed by a :

start : { i f ( cond ) goto o u t s i d e ; / some code / goto s t a r t ; } outside : / outside block /

Spaghetti code

Dijkstra. Go To Statement Considered Harmful. Communications of the ACM 11(3),1968

Excess use of goto creates sphagetti code. Using goto makes code harder to read and debug. Any code that uses goto can be written without using one.

error handling
Language like C++ and Java provide exception mechanism to recover from errors. In C, goto provides a convenient way to exit from nested blocks.
c o n t _ f l a g =1; for ( . . ) { for ( i n i t ; cont_flag ; i t e r ) { i f ( error_cond ) { c o n t _ f l a g =0; break ; } / inner loop / } i f ( ! c o n t _ f l a g ) break ; / outer loop / }
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for ( . . ) { for ( . . ) { i f ( error_cond ) goto e r r o r ; / skips 2 blocks / } } error :

6.087 Lecture 4 January 14, 2010

Review

Control ow

I/O Standard I/O String I/O File I/O

Preliminaries

Input and output facilities are provided by the standard

library <stdio.h> and not by the language itself.

A text stream consists of a series of lines ending with \n.

The standard library takes care of conversion from

\r\n\n

A binary stream consists of a series of raw bytes. The streams provided by standard library are buffered.

Standard input and output

int putchar(int)

putchar(c) puts the character c on the standard output. it returns the character printed or EOF on error.
int getchar()

returns the next character from standard input.

it returns EOF on error.

Standard input and output

What does the following code do?

i n t main ( ) { char c ; while ( ( c= g e t c h a r ( ) ) ! = EOF) { i f ( c>=A && c<=Z )
c=cA+a ;
p u t c h a r ( c ) ;
}
r e t u r n 0 ;
}

To use a le instead of standard input, use < operator (*nix).

Normal invocation: ./a.out Input redirection: a.out < le.txt. Treats le.txt as source of

standard input.This is an OS feature, not a language feature.

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Standard output:formatted

int printf (char format [], arg1,arg2 ,...)

printf() can be used for formatted output. It takes in a variable number of arguments. It returns the number of characters printed. The format can contain literal strings as well as format

speciers (starts with %). Examples:

p r i n t f ( "hello world\n" ) ; p r i n t f ( "%d\n" , 1 0 ) ; / f o r m a t : %d ( i n t e g e r ) , argument : 1 0 / p r i n t f ( "Prices:%d and %d\n" , 1 0 , 2 0 ) ;

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printf format specication

The format specication has the following components

%[ags ][ width ][. precision ][ length]<type>

type: type d,i x,X u c s f d e,E % meaning integer integer (hex) unsigned integer character string oat double oat(exp) literal % example
printf ("%d",10); /prints 10/ printf ("%x",10); / print 0xa/ printf ("%u",10); /prints 10/ printf ("%c",A); /prints A/ printf ("%s","hello"); /prints hello/ printf ("%f",2.3); / prints 2.3/ printf ("%d",2.3); / prints 2.3/ 1e3,1.2E3,1E3 printf ("%d %%",10); /prints 10%/

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printf format specication (cont.)

%[ags ][ width ][. precision ][ modier]<type>

width: format
printf ("%d",10) printf ("%4d",10) printf ("%s","hello") printf ("%7s","hello")

output "10" bb10 (b:space) hello bbhello

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printf format specication (cont.)

%[ags ][ width ][. precision ][ modier]<type>

ag: format
printf ("%d,%+d,%+d",10,10) printf ("%04d",10) printf ("%7s","hello") printf ("%-7s","hello")

output 10,+10,-10 0010 bbhello hellobb

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printf format specication (cont.)

%[ags ][ width ][. precision ][ modier]<type>

precision: format
printf ("%.2f,%.0f,1.141,1.141) printf ("%.2e,%.0e,1.141,100.00) printf ("%.4s","hello") printf ("%.1s","hello")

output 1.14,1 1.14e+00,1e+02 hell h

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printf format specication (cont.)

%[ags ][ width ][. precision ][ modier]<type>

modier: modier h l L meaning interpreted as short. Use with i,d,o,u,x interpreted as long. Use with i,d,o,u,x interpreted as double. Use with e,f,g

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Digression: character arrays

Since we will be reading and writing strings, here is a brief digression

strings are represented as an array of characters C does not restrict the length of the string. The end of the

string is specied using 0. For instance, "hello" is represented using the array {h,e,l,l,\0}. Declaration examples:
char str []= "hello"; /compiler takes care of size/ char str[10]="hello"; /make sure the array is large enough/ char str []={ h,e,l,l,0};

Note: use \" if you want the string to contain ".

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Digression: character arrays

Comparing strings: the header le <string .h> provides the function int strcmp(char s[],char t []) that compares two strings in dictionary order (lower case letters come after capital case).
the function returns a value <0 if s comes before t the function return a value 0 if s is the same as t the function return a value >0 if s comes after t strcmp is case sensitive

Examples
strcmp("A","a") /<0/ strcmp("IRONMAN","BATMAN") />0/ strcmp("aA","aA") /==0/ strcmp("aA","a") />0/

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Formatted input

int scanf(char format ,...)

is the input analog of printf.

scanf reads characters from standard input, interpreting

them according to format specication

Similar to printf , scanf also takes variable number of

arguments.

The format specication is the same as that for printf When multiple items are to be read, each item is assumed

to be separated by white space.

It returns the number of items read or EOF.

Important: scanf ignores white spaces. Important: Arguments have to be address of variables

(pointers).

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Formatted input

int scanf(char format ,...)

is the input analog of printf.

Examples:

printf ("%d",x) printf ("%10d",x) printf ("%f",f) printf ("%s",str) printf ("%s",str) printf ("%s %s",fname,lname)

scanf("%d",&x) scanf("%d",&x) scanf("%f",&f) scanf("%s",str) /note no & required/ scanf("%20s",str) /note no & required/ scanf("%20s %20s",fname,lname)

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String input/output

Instead of writing to the standard output, the formatted data can

be written to or read from character arrays.

int sprintf (char string [], char format [], arg1,arg2)

The format specication is the same as printf. The output is written to string (does not check size). Returns the number of character written or negative value

on error.
int sscanf(char str [], char format [], arg1,arg2)

The format specication is the same as scanf; The input is read from str variable. Returns the number of items read or negative value on

error.

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File I/O

So far, we have read from the standard input and written to the
standard output. C allows us to read data from text/binary les
using fopen().

FILE fopen(char name[],char mode[])

mode can be "r" (read only),"w" (write only),"a" (append)

among other options. "b" can be appended for binary les.

fopen returns a pointer to the le stream if it exists or

NULL otherwise.

We dont need to know the details of the FILE data type. Important: The standard input and output are also FILE*

datatypes (stdin,stdout).
Important: stderr corresponds to standard error

output(different from stdout).

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File I/O(cont.)

int fclose (FILE fp)

closes the stream (releases OS resources). fclose() is automatically called on all open les when

program terminates.

23

File input

int getc(FILE fp)

reads a single character from the stream. returns the character read or EOF on error/end of le.

Note: getchar simply uses the standard input to read a character. We can implement it as follows:
#dene getchar() getc(stdin )

char[] fgets(char line [], int maxlen,FILE fp)

reads a single line (upto maxlen characters) from the input

stream (including linebreak).

returns a pointer to the character array that stores the line

(read-only)

return NULL if end of stream.

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File output

int putc(int c,FILE fp)

writes a single character c to the output stream. returns the character written or EOF on error.

Note: putchar simply uses the standard output to write a character. We can implement it as follows:
#dene putchar(c) putc(c,stdout)

int fputs(char line [], FILE fp)

writes a single line to the output stream. returns zero on success, EOF otherwise.
int fscanf(FILE fp,char format [], arg1,arg2)

similar to scanf,sscanf reads items from input stream fp.

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Command line input

In addition to taking input from standard input and les, you

can also pass input while invoking the program.

Command line parameters are very common in *nix

environment.
So far, we have used int main() as to invoke the main

function. However, main function can take arguments that are populated when the program is invoked.

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Command line input (cont.)

int main(int argc,char argv[])

argc: count of arguments. argv[]: an array of pointers to each of the arguments note: the arguments include the name of the program as

well. Examples:
./cat a.txt b.txt (argc=3,argv[0]="cat" argv[1]="a.txt"

argv[2]="b.txt"

./cat (argc=1,argv[0]="cat")

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6.087 Practical Programming in C

January (IAP) 2010

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