C PROGRAMING
LT DS NJINDISONI
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C Program Structure
A C program basically consists of the following parts
Preprocessor Commands
Functions
Variables
Statements & Expressions
Comments
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Let us look at a simple code that would print the words "Hello World“
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
/* my first program in C */
printf("Hello, World! \n");
return 0;
}
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Let us look various parts of the above program
The first line of the program #include is a preprocessor command, which
tells a C compiler to include stdio.h file before going to actual compilation
The next line int main() is the main function where program execution
begins
The next line /*...*/ will be ignored by the compiler and it has been put to
add additional comments in the program,So such lines are called
comments in the program
The next line printf(...) is another function available in C which causes the
message "Hello, World!" to be displayed on the screen
The next line return 0; terminates main()function and returns the value 0
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Compile & Execute C Program
Let’s look at how to save the source code in a file, and how to
compile and run it
Following are the simple steps:
Open a text editor and add the above-mentioned code
Save the file as hello.c
Open a command prompt and go to the directory where you saved the file
Type gcc hello.c and press enter to compile your code
If there are no errors in your code, the command prompt will take you to
the next line and would generate [Link] executable file
Now, type [Link] to execute your program
You will be able to see "Hello World" printed on the screen
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It will appear as
$ gcc hello.c
$ ./[Link]
Hello, World!
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Make sure that gcc compiler is in your path and that you are running
it in the directory containing source file hello.c
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C Basic Syntax
This chapter will give details about all the basic syntax about C
programming language including tokens, keywords, identifiers, etc
You have seen a basic structure of C program, so it will be easy to
understand other basic building blocks of the C programming
language
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Tokens in C
A C program consists of various tokens and a token is either a
keyword, an identifier, a constant, a string literal, or a symbol
For example, the following C statement consists of five tokens
printf("Hello, World! \n");
The individual tokens are
printf
(
"Hello, World! \n"
)
;
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Semicolons ;
In C program, the semicolon is a statement terminator
That is, each individual statement must be ended with a semicolon
It indicates the end of one logical entity
For example, following are two different statements
printf("Hello, World! \n");
return 0;
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Comments
Comments are like helping text in your C program and they are
ignored by the compiler
They start with /* and terminates with the characters */ as shown
below:
/* my first program in C */ (multiline comments)
Or just two slashes // as shown below:
// my first program in C (single line comment)
You cannot have comments within comments and they do not occur
within a string or character literals
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Identifiers
A C identifier is a name used to identify a variable, function, or any
other user-defined item
An identifier starts with a letter A to Z or a to z or an underscore _
followed by zero or more letters, underscores, and digits (0 to 9)
C does not allow punctuation characters such as @, $, and % within
identifiers
C is a case sensitive programming language,thus Manpower and
manpower are two different identifiers in C
Here are some examples of acceptable identifiers
Mohd, zara, abc, move_name, a_123, myname50 _temp, j, a23b9, retVal
Example of invalid identifiers include: 5bc,int,rec#,avg no
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NOTE: RULE FOR NAMING
IDENTIFIER
Name should consist of only alphabets, digits and underscore sign
First character should be an alphabet or underscore
The name should not be a keyword
Since C is case sensitive, uppercase and lowercase letters are
considered different eg code, Code and CODE are three different
identifiers
An identifier may be arbitrarily long, some implementation of C
recognize only the first eight characters, ANSI Standard compilers
recognizes 31 characters
Identifiers are given meaningful names
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Keywords
The following list shows the reserved words in C
These reserved words may not be used as constant or variable or any
other identifier names
Auto, else, Long, switch, break, enum
Register, typedef
Case, extern, return, union
Char, float, short unsigned
Const, for, signed, void, continue
Goto, sizeof
Volatile, default, if, static, while, do, int
Struct, _packed, double
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Whitespace in C
A line containing only whitespace, possibly with a comment, is known as a blank
line, and a C compiler totally ignores it
Whitespace is the term used in C to describe blanks, tabs, newline characters
and comments
Whitespace separates one part of a statement from another and enables the
compiler to identify where one element in a statement, such as int, ends and
the next element begins
Therefore, in the following statement:
int age; There must be at least one whitespace character (usually a space) between
int and age for the compiler to be able to distinguish them
On the other hand, in the following statement:
fruit = apples + oranges; // get the total fruit No whitespace characters are necessary
between fruit and =, or between = and apples, although you are free to include some
if you wish for readability purpose
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C Data Types
In the C programming language, data types refer to an extensive
system used for declaring variables or functions of different types
The type of a variable determines how much space it occupies in
storage and how the bit pattern stored is interpreted
The types in C can be classified as follows
Basic Types: They are arithmetic types and consists of the two types:
integer types and
Floating point types
Enumerated types: They are again arithmetic types and they are used to
define variables that can only be assigned certain discrete integer values
throughout the program
The type void: The type specifier void indicates that no value is available
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Derived types: They include
Pointer types
Array types
Structure types
Union types and
Function types
The array types and structure types are referred to collectively as the
aggregate types
The type of a function specifies the type of the function's return value
We will see basic types in the following section, whereas, other types will
be covered in the upcoming chapters
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Integer Types
Following table gives you details about standard integer types with its
storage sizes and value ranges
type Storage size Value range
char 1 byte -128 to 127 or 0 to 255
Unsigned char 1 byte 0 to 255
Signed char 1 byte -128 to 127
int 2 or 4 bytes -32,768 to 32,767 or -
2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
Unsigned int 2 or 4 bytes 0 to 65,535 or 0 to 4,294,967,295
short 2 bytes -32,768 to 32,767
Unsigned short 2 bytes 0 to 65,535
long 4 bytes -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
Unsigned long 4 bytes 0 to 4,294,967,295
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To get the exact size of a type or a variable on a particular platform, you can use the
sizeof operator
The expressions sizeof(type) yields the storage size of the object or type in bytes
Following is an example to get the size of int type on any machine
#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
int main()
{
printf("Storage size for int : %d \n", sizeof(int));
return 0;
}
When you compile and execute the program, it produces the following result on
Linux/windows: Storage size for int : 4
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Floating-Point Types
Following table gives you details about standard floating-point types
with storage sizes and value ranges and their precision
Type Storage Value range Precision
size
float 4 byte 1.2E-38 to 3.4E+38 6 decimal
places
double 8 byte 2.3E-308 to 1.7E+308 15 decimal
places
long double 10 byte 3.4E-4932 to 19 decimal
1.1E+4932 places
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The header file float.h defines macros that allow you to use these values and
other details about the binary representation of real numbers in your programs
Following example will print storage space taken by a float type and its range
values
#include <stdio.h>
#include <float.h>
int main()
{
printf("Storage size for float : %d \n", sizeof(float));
printf("Minimum float positive value: %E\n", FLT_MIN );
printf("Maximum float positive value: %E\n", FLT_MAX );
printf("Precision value: %d\n", FLT_DIG ); return 0;
}
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When you compile and execute the above program, it produces the
following result on Linux/windows:
Storage size for float : 4
Minimum float positive value: 1.175494E-38
Maximum float positive value: 3.402823E+38
Precision value: 6
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The void Type
The void type specifies that no value is available. It is used in three
kinds of situations
S.N Types and Description
.
1. Function returns as void There are various functions in C which do
not return value or you can say they return void. A function with no
return value has the return type as void. For example, void exit (int
status);
2. Function arguments as void There are various functions in C which
do not accept any parameter. A function with no parameter can
accept as a void. For example, int rand(void);
3. Pointers to void A pointer of type void * represents the address of
an object, but not its type. For example, a memory allocation
function void *malloc( size_t size ); returns a pointer to void which
can be casted to any data type.
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The void type may not be understood to you at this point, so let us
proceed and we will cover these concepts in the upcoming chapters.
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