Advanced C Programming Notes Outline

Page 1: Overview of C Programming

 Introduction to C

o History and evolution of C

o Why C is important: Systems programming, embedded systems, game development, etc.

 Basic Syntax Review

o Data types, operators, and control structures

o Functions, recursion, and parameter passing

o Pointers and arrays

Page 2: Advanced Data Structures

 Structs and Unions

o Defining and using structures

o Memory layout and alignment of structs

o Unions and their use cases

 Dynamic Data Structures

o Implementing linked lists (single, double, circular)

o Stack and queue implementations

o Trees and binary search trees (insertion, deletion, traversal)

Page 3: Memory Management

 Dynamic Memory Allocation

o Using malloc, calloc, realloc, and free

o Avoiding memory leaks and dangling pointers

 Memory Alignment and Padding

o Understanding data alignment

o Memory padding in structures

 Custom Memory Allocators

o Implementing custom memory pools

o Using slab and buddy allocation techniques

Page 4: Pointers and Pointer Arithmetic

  Pointer Basics and Pointer Arithmetic

o Working with different types of pointers

o Arithmetic operations on pointers

 Function Pointers and Callbacks

o Defining and using function pointers

o Implementing callback functions

 Pointers to Arrays, Structures, and Functions

o Multidimensional arrays and array of pointers

o Pointer to a struct and accessing struct members

Page 5: File I/O and Input/Output Operations

 File Handling Basics

o Opening, reading, writing, and closing files (fopen, fclose, fread, fwrite)

o Text vs. binary file operations

 Advanced File I/O Techniques

o File positioning (fseek, ftell, rewind)

o Reading/writing large files efficiently

 Formatted Input/Output

o Using printf, scanf, and formatted output

o Implementing custom format specifiers

Page 6: Preprocessor Directives and Macros

 Macro Basics

o Defining and using macros (#define, #undef)

o Conditional compilation (#ifdef, #ifndef, #if, #else, #endif)

 Advanced Macro Techniques

o Variadic macros and macro functions

o Using ## and # operators in macros

 Header Guards and Include Files

o Preventing multiple inclusions with header guards

o Organizing code into header and implementation files

Page 7: Multithreading and Concurrency

 Using the POSIX Threads (pthreads) Library

o Creating and managing threads (pthread_create, pthread_join)

o Thread synchronization using pthread_mutex and pthread_cond

 Race Conditions and Deadlocks

o Detecting and avoiding race conditions

o Deadlock prevention strategies

 Atomic Operations and Memory Barriers

o Using atomic operations for thread-safe programming

o Memory ordering and barriers

Page 8: Interfacing with the Operating System

 System Calls and Low-Level I/O

o Using system calls (open, read, write, close)

o Differences between standard I/O and low-level I/O

 Process Management

o Creating and managing processes (fork, exec, wait)

o Inter-process communication (pipes, shared memory)

 Signals and Signal Handling

o Handling signals with signal and sigaction

o Implementing custom signal handlers

Page 9: Networking in C

 Socket Programming Basics

o Creating sockets and basic socket operations (socket, bind, listen, accept)

o Differences between TCP and UDP sockets

 Client-Server Model Implementation

o Writing simple client and server programs

o Handling multiple clients with select and poll

 Asynchronous I/O and Non-Blocking Sockets

o Implementing non-blocking socket communication

 o Using epoll for high-performance I/O multiplexing

Page 10: Advanced C Features and Best Practices

 Inline Assembly and Linking with Other Languages

o Embedding assembly code with asm

o Calling C functions from other languages (e.g., Python, C++)

 Debugging Techniques

o Using gdb for debugging

o Profiling with valgrind and gprof

 Code Optimization and Best Practices

o Writing efficient and maintainable C code

o Memory optimization and reducing memory footprint

 Modern C Standards (C11 and Beyond)

o New features in C11 (e.g., atomics, multi-threading)

o Static and thread-local storage