CHAPTER

C Basic Syntax
This chapter will give details about all the basic syntax about C programming language
including tokens, keywords, identifiers, etc.

Y ou have seen a basic structure of C program, so it will be easy to understand other

basic building blocks of the C programming language.

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"
)
;

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;

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 7
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 */

You cannot have comments within comments and they do not occur within a string or
character literals.

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

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

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 8
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.

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 9
 CHAPTER

C Data Types

I n 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:

S.N. Types and Description

Basic Types:
1 They are arithmetic types and consists of the two types: (a) integer types and (b) floating-
point types.

Enumerated types:
2 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:

3
The type specifier void indicates that no value is available.

Derived types:
4 They include (a) Pointer types, (b) Array types, (c) Structure types, (d) Union types and
(e) 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.

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

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 10
 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

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 above program, it produces the following result on
Linux:

Storage size for int : 4

Floating-Point Types
Following table gives you details about standard floating-point types with storage sizes and
value ranges and their precision:

Type Storage size Value range Precision

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 1.1E+4932 19 decimal places

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()

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 11
 {
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;
}

When you compile and execute the above program, it produces the following result on
Linux:

Storage size for float : 4

Minimum float positive value: 1.175494E-38
Maximum float positive value: 3.402823E+38
Precision value: 6

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

Function returns as void

There are various functions in C which do not return value or you can say they return void.
1
A function with no return value has the return type as void. For example, void exit (int
status);

Function arguments as void

2 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);

Pointers to void
A pointer of type void * represents the address of an object, but not its type. For example,
3
a memory allocation function void *malloc( size_t size ); returns a pointer to void which
can be casted to any data type.

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.

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 12
 CHAPTER

C Variables

A variable is nothing but a name given to a storage area that our programs can

manipulate. Each variable in C has a specific type, which determines the size and layout of
the variable's memory; the range of values that can be stored within that memory; and the
set of operations that can be applied to the variable.

The name of a variable can be composed of letters, digits, and the underscore character. It
must begin with either a letter or an underscore. Upper and lowercase letters are distinct
because C is case-sensitive. Based on the basic types explained in previous chapter, there
will be the following basic variable types:

Type Description

Char Typically a single octet(one byte). This is an integer type.

Int The most natural size of integer for the machine.

Float A single-precision floating point value.

Double A double-precision floating point value.

Void Represents the absence of type.

C programming language also allows to define various other types of variables, which we
will cover in subsequent chapters like Enumeration, Pointer, Array, Structure, Union, etc.
For this chapter, let us study only basic variable types.

Variable Definition in C:
A variable definition means to tell the compiler where and how much to create the storage for the
variable. A variable definition specifies a data type and contains a list of one or more variables of
that type as follows:

type variable_list;

Here, type must be a valid C data type including char, w_char, int, float, double, bool or any user-
defined object, etc., and variable_list may consist of one or more identifier names separated by
commas. Some valid declarations are shown here:

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 13
int i, j, k;
char c, ch;
float f, salary;
double d;

The line int i, j, k; both declares and defines the variables i, j and k; which instructs the compiler
to create variables named i, j and k of type int.

Variables can be initialized (assigned an initial value) in their declaration. The initializer consists of
an equal sign followed by a constant expression as follows:

type variable_name = value;

Some examples are:

extern int d = 3, f = 5; // declaration of d and f.

int d = 3, f = 5; // definition and initializing d and f.
byte z = 22; // definition and initializes z.
char x = 'x'; // the variable x has the value 'x'.

For definition without an initializer: variables with static storage duration are implicitly initialized
with NULL (all bytes have the value 0); the initial value of all other variables is undefined.

Variable Declaration in C:
A variable declaration provides assurance to the compiler that there is one variable existing with
the given type and name so that compiler proceed for further compilation without needing
complete detail about the variable. A variable declaration has its meaning at the time of
compilation only, compiler needs actual variable declaration at the time of linking of the program.

A variable declaration is useful when you are using multiple files and you define your variable in
one of the files, which will be available at the time of linking of the program. You will
use extern keyword to declare a variable at any place. Though you can declare a variable multiple
times in your C program but it can be defined only once in a file, a function or a block of code.

Example
Try the following example, where variables have been declared at the top, but they have been
defined and initialized inside the main function:

#include <stdio.h>

// Variable definition:
extern int a, b;
extern int c;
extern float f;

int main ()
{
// Variable definition:
int a, b;
int c;
float f;

// actual initialization
a =10;

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 14
 b =20;
c = a + b;

printf("value of c : %d \n", c);

f = 70.0/3.0;
printf("value of f : %f \n", f);

return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

value of c : 30
value of f : 23.333334

Same concept applies on function declaration where you provide a function name at the time of its
declaration and its actual definition can be given anywhere else. For example:

// function declaration
int func();

int main()
{
// function call
int i = func();
}
// function definition
int func()
{
return 0;
}

Lvalues and Rvalues in C

There are two kinds of expressions in C:

1. lvalue: An expression that is an lvalue may appear as either the left-hand or right-hand
side of an assignment.

2. rvalue: An expression that is an rvalue may appear on the right- but not left-hand side
of an assignment.

Variables are lvalues and so may appear on the left-hand side of an assignment. Numeric
literals are rvalues and so may not be assigned and cannot appear on the left-hand side.
Following is a valid statement:

int g = 20;

But following is not a valid statement and would generate compile-time error:

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 15
10 = 20;

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 16
 CHAPTER

C Constants and Literals

T he constants refer to fixed values that the program may not alter during its

execution. These fixed values are also called literals.

Constants can be of any of the basic data types like an integer constant, a floating
constant, a character constant, or a string literal. There are also enumeration
constants as well.

The constants are treated just like regular variables except that their values cannot be
modified after their definition.

Integer literals
An integer literal can be a decimal, octal, or hexadecimal constant. A prefix specifies the
base or radix: 0x or 0X for hexadecimal, 0 for octal, and nothing for decimal.

An integer literal can also have a suffix that is a combination of U and L, for unsigned and
long, respectively. The suffix can be uppercase or lowercase and can be in any order.

Here are some examples of integer literals:

212 /* Legal */
215u /* Legal */
0xFeeL /* Legal */
078 /* Illegal: 8 is not an octal digit */
032UU /* Illegal: cannot repeat a suffix */

Following are other examples of various types of Integer literals:

85 /* decimal */
0213 /* octal */
0x4b /* hexadecimal */
30 /* int */
30u /* unsigned int */
30l /* long */
30ul /* unsigned long */

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 17
Floating-point literals
A floating-point literal has an integer part, a decimal point, a fractional part, and an
exponent part. You can represent floating point literals either in decimal form or
exponential form.

While representing using decimal form, you must include the decimal point, the exponent,
or both and while representing using exponential form, you must include the integer part,
the fractional part, or both. The signed exponent is introduced by e or E.

Here are some examples of floating-point literals:

3.14159 /* Legal */
314159E-5L /* Legal */
510E /* Illegal: incomplete exponent */
210f /* Illegal: no decimal or exponent */
.e55 /* Illegal: missing integer or fraction */

Character constants
Character literals are enclosed in single quotes, e.g., 'x' and can be stored in a simple
variable of char type.

A character literal can be a plain character (e.g., 'x'), an escape sequence (e.g., '\t'), or a
universal character (e.g., '\u02C0').

There are certain characters in C when they are preceded by a backslash they will have
special meaning and they are used to represent like newline (\n) or tab (\t). Here, you
have a list of some of such escape sequence codes:

Escape
Meaning
sequence

\\ \ character

\' ' character

\" " character

\? ? character

\a Alert or bell

\b Backspace

\f Form feed

\n Newline

\r Carriage return

\t Horizontal tab

\v Vertical tab

\ooo Octal number of one to three digits

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 18
 \xhh . . . Hexadecimal number of one or more digits

Following is the example to show few escape sequence characters:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
printf("Hello\tWorld\n\n");

return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

Hello World

String literals
String literals or constants are enclosed in double quotes "". A string contains characters
that are similar to character literals: plain characters, escape sequences, and universal
characters.

You can break a long line into multiple lines using string literals and separating them using
whitespaces.

Here are some examples of string literals. All the three forms are identical strings.

"hello, dear"

"hello, \

dear"

"hello, " "d" "ear"

Defining Constants
There are two simple ways in C to define constants:

1. Using #define preprocessor.

2. Using const keyword.

The #define Preprocessor

Following is the form to use #define preprocessor to define a constant:

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 19
 #define identifier value

Following example explains it in detail:

#include <stdio.h>

#define LENGTH 10
#define WIDTH 5
#define NEWLINE '\n'

int main()
{

int area;

area = LENGTH * WIDTH;

printf("value of area : %d", area);
printf("%c", NEWLINE);

return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

value of area : 50

The const Keyword

You can use const prefix to declare constants with a specific type as follows:

const type variable = value;

Following example explains it in detail:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
const int LENGTH = 10;
const int WIDTH = 5;
const char NEWLINE = '\n';
int area;

area = LENGTH * WIDTH;

printf("value of area : %d", area);
printf("%c", NEWLINE);

return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 20
value of area : 50

Note that it is a good programming practice to define constants in CAPITALS.

TUTORIALS POINT
Simply Easy Learning Page 21