UNIT 2

ELEMENTS OF C
LH – 4HRS

PRESENTED BY:
ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
C PROGRAMMING

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

CONTENTS (LH -4HRS)
2.1 Introduction, History, Features, Advantages and Disadvantages,
Structure of C Program,
2.2 Compiling Process, C Preprocessor and Header Files,
2.3 Library Function, Character Set, Comments,
2.4 Tokens and its types,
2.5 Data types,
2.6 Escape Sequences, Preprocessor Directive

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

2.1 Introduction, History, Features, Advantages
and Disadvantages, Structure of C Program
1. Introduction
• C is a procedural programming language. It was initially developed by Dennis Ritchie
between 1969 and 1973 at Bell Labs.
• It is one of the most popular procedural, general purpose, and high-level programming
language used in all operating systems of today.
• The main features of C language include low-level access to memory, simple set of
keywords, and clean style. These features make C language suitable for system
programming like operating system or compiler development.
• Although C was designed for writing system software, it is also widely used for
developing application software.
• C has greatly influenced many other popular programming languages, most notably
C++, which began as an extension to C.
• C supports the programmer with a rich set of built-in functions and operators. C
supports different types of statements like sequential, selection, looping etc.
• Procedural programming concept is well supported in C which helps in dividing the
programs into functional modules or code blocks.
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
2. History of C
In 1822 with the invention of differential engine by Charles Babbage, the
necessity of programming language arises. In 1949, Von Neumann developed
short code language i.e. mnemonics. Till 1960s there were numbers of
programming language but all were special purposed like FORTRAN (Formula
Translation) and COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language).
After special purpose language, the necessity of general purpose language
arised and development of ALGOL (Algorithm language) and then CPL
(Combined Programming Language) occurred. CPL was jointly developed by
university of Cambridge and university of London, the next language based
on CPL is called BCPL (Basic CPL) designed by Martin Richards of University of
Cambridge in 1966, which was the intended as system programming
language, used to write compilers. Around the same time, a language called
B was developed at Bell Labs by Ken Thompson with contribution of Dennis
Ritchie in 1969. The name B was originated from Bonnie (Thompson’s wife).
Since, B also turned to be very specific, in 1972; C was written and developed
by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. It was named C because most of the features
are derived from B language. C program is general purpose, structured,
procedural programming language. In 1980, ANSI (American National
Standard Institute) standardized C language.
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
3. Features of C Language
a. Simple: C language is a simple and easy programming language for both learning and
programming. Most of the computer programming languages follow its syntax and
concepts, like C++, Java, C# etc.
b. Structured: C language is a structured programming language. In this language, we can
divide a big program into a several different structured blocks and manage the program
easily.
c. Portable: C language is a portable programming language due to which, we can run C
language programs on different platforms with little modification or without modification.
d. Middle Level: C language is a middle-level programming language, because it contains
features of both low-level and high-level programming languages.
e. Fast execution: The compilation and execution of C programs is much faster than any other
language.
f. Rich Set Library: C language provides lot of libraries like stdio.h, math.h, string.h, conio.h,
graphics.h etc. These libraries help us to create programs or applications easily and faster.
g. Memory management: C language provides better memory management using pointer.
We can allocate dynamic memory at runtime in C using pointer functions like malloc(),
calloc(), alloc() etc.
h. Modular: C language is a modular programming language which means we can divide a C
program into small modules according to functionality; that makes the program easy to
understand.
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
4. Advantages and Disadvantages of C Language:
Advantages:
• C is very easy to learn language for expressing ideas in programming
in a comfortable way.
• C is close to machine because it supports features like pointers, bytes
and bit level manipulation.
• C is structured programming language which makes the program
easier to understand and modify.
• C language produces portable programs, they can be run on any
compiler with little or no modifications.
• C is powerful programming language as it provides a wide variety of
inbuilt data types and ability to create custom data types using
structures.
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
Disadvantages:
• C doesn’t have concept of OOP’s, that’s why C++ is developed.
• There is no runtime checking in C language.
• There is no strict type checking. For example, we can pass an integer
value for the floating data type.
• C doesn’t have the concept of namespace.
• C doesn’t have the concept of constructor or destructor.

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

5. Structure of C Program
A C-program has the following basic structure:

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

Documentation section:
• It consists of a set of comment lines giving the name of the program, the author and other
details as a short description of the purpose of the program etc.
Link section:
• This section provides instructions to the compiler to link functions from the system library.
Definition section:
• This section defines all the symbolic constants.
Global Declaration section:
• The variables which are used in more than one functions or blocks are called global variables.
These variables are defined or declared in this section. Declaring the variables before the
main function makes the variables accessible to all the functions in a C language program.
Declaring the variables within main functions or other functions makes the usage of the
variables confined to the function only and not accessible outside. In this section, all the user
defined functions are also declared.
main () Function section:
• Every C program must have one main function. It contains different declaration and
executable statements between the opening and closing braces.
Subprogram section:
• It contains all the user-defined functions that are called in other and main function. User-
defined functions are generally places immediately after the main function although they
may appear in any order.
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Example:
/*Program to find area and circumference of a circle*/ →Documentation section
#include<stdio.h> → Link section
#define PI 3.14 → Definition section
float r,a,c;
float area(); Global Declaration section
float circumference();
int main(){
printf("Radius= ");
scanf("%f",&r);
a=area();
c=circumference(); main () function section
printf("Area= %f",a);
printf("\nCircumference= %f",c);
return 0;
}
float area(){
return PI*r*r; sub-function1 () OUTPUT:
}
float circumference(){
return 2*PI*r; sub-function2 ()
}
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
2.2 Compiling Process, C Preprocessor and
Header Files
1. Compiling Process:
• The code of the program written in high level language is called source
code; which is not directly understandable by the computer. Hence, the
source code should be translated into computer understandable form i.e.
machine level language.
• The translation process is called compilation; which is done by special
software called compiler. The machine level code that we set after
compilation is called object code which is the executable file that is
compatible with particular platform (windows, linux etc.)
• Execution of the program involves loading the executable object code into
the computer memory and executes the instructions. While executing the
program, the program may load data from memory or keyboard.

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

Figure: Process of compiling and running a C program

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

2. C preprocessor and Header Files:
• The C preprocessor is a macro processor that is used automatically by
the C compiler to transform our program before actual compilation. It
is called a macro processor because it allows us to define macros,
which are brief abbreviations for longer constructs.
• The C preprocessor provides two separate facilities that we can use
as:
• Inclusion of header files. These are files of declarations that can be
substituted into our program.
• Macro expansion. We can define macros, which are abbreviations for
arbitrary fragments of C code, and then the C preprocessor will replace the
macros with their definitions throughout the program. (#define PI 3.14-
constant)

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• The file with .h extension which defines several built-in functions like
printf(), scanf(), clrscr(), getch() is called header file. Simply, it is the
collection of predefined functions.
• For example: stdio.h, conio.h, math.h etc.
• The inclusion of header files in the program is the pre-information to
the compiler regarding the library functions used and its relevant
codes to be executed.
• For example: printf() function is defined in stdio.h header file. To use
this function in program, the corresponding header file in which it is
define (i.e. stdio.h) should be included in the program as
#include<stdio.h>.

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

2.3 Library Function, Character Set, Comments
1. Library Function:
• Library functions are built-in functions that are grouped together and placed in a
common location called library.
• Each function here performs a specific operation. We can use this library functions to
get the pre-defined output.
• All C standard library functions are declared by using many header files. These library
functions are created at the time of designing the compilers.
• We include the header files in our C program by using #include<filename.h>. Whenever
the program is run and executed, the related files are included in the C program.
Header File Functions
• Some of the header file functions are as follows −
• stdio.h − It is a standard i/o header file in which Input/output functions are declared
• conio.h − This is a console input/output header file.
• string.h − All string related functions are in this header file.
• stdlib.h − This file contains common functions which are used in the C programs.
• math.h − All functions related to mathematics are in this header file.
• time.h − This file contains time and clock related functions.
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
2. Character Set:
• The set of characters that are used to form words, numbers and
expressions in C is called C character set. The combination of these
characters form words, numbers and expressions.
The C character set is grouped into the following four categories:
a. Letters or alphabets
b. Digits
c. Special Characters
d. White Spaces

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

a. Letters
• Uppercase: A….Z
• Lowercase: a….z
b. Digits
• All decimal digits: 0….9
c. Special Characters
• ~@#$%^&*()_-+={}[];:'"/?.>,<\|
d. White Spaces
• Blank space
• Horizontal tab
• New line
• Carriage return
• Form feed

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN

3. Comments:
• The statements written in program which are not compiled and executed
are called comments. They are used for documentation purpose. They are
ignored by compiler and user is free to write his/her comment within those
symbols. There are two types of comments, they are
a. Single Line Comment
It means we can give comment for a single line. For example:
//C programming is more interesting.
Here // is used as a single line comment, it has no ending symbol.
b. Multiple Line Comment
It means user can give comment for multiple lines with between the symbols
/* */. This is applicable in both C and C++. For example:
/* C programming
has rich
set of operators*/
PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
 2.4 Tokens and its types
• Every C program is a collection of instructions and every instruction is a collection
of some individual units. Every smallest individual unit of a C program is called
token. Every instruction in a C program is a collection of tokens. Tokens are used to
construct c programs and they are said to the basic building blocks of a C program.

In a C program tokens may contain the following...

1.Identifiers
2.Keywords
3.Operators
4.Special Symbols
5.Constants
6.Strings

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Identifiers:
• An identifier is a collection of characters which acts as the name of variable, function, array,
pointer, structure, etc.
• The identifier is a user-defined name of an entity to identify it uniquely during the program
execution.
Example
int marks;
char studentName[30];
• Here, marks and studentName are identifiers.
Rules for Creating Identifiers:
1. An identifier can contain letters (UPPERCASE and lowercase), numerics & underscore symbol
only.
2. An identifier should not start with a numerical value. It can start with a letter or an underscore.
3. We should not use any special symbols in between the identifier even whitespace. However, the
only underscore symbol is allowed.
4. Keywords should not be used as identifiers.
5. There is no limit for the length of an identifier. However, the compiler considers the first 31
characters only.
6. An identifier must be unique in its scope. PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
Keywords:
• Keywords are the reserved words with predefined meaning which
already known to the compiler.
• In the C programming language, there are 32 keywords. All the 32
keywords have their meaning which is already known to the compiler.
• Whenever C compiler come across a keyword, automatically it
understands its meaning.

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2.5 Data types
• The Data type is a set of value with predefined characteristics.
• Data types are used to declare variable, constants, arrays, pointers
and functions.
C language data types can be classified as:
1. Primary/Primitive data type
2. Derived data type
3. User-Defined data type

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PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN
2.6 Escape Sequences, Preprocessor Directive
Escape Sequences:
• In C, all escape sequences consist of two or more characters, the first of which is
the backslash, \ (called the "Escape character"); the remaining characters
determine the interpretation of the escape sequence.
• For example, \n is an escape sequence that denotes a newline character.

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Pre-processor Directives:
• These are placed in the source program before the main function.
When source code is compiled, it is examined by the pre-processor
for any pre-processor directives. If there are any, appropriate actions
are taken and then the source program is handed over to the
compiler.
• They follow special syntax rules: they all begin with the symbol #
(hash) and do not require a ; (semicolon) at the end.
For example:
#include<stdio.h> #define PI 3.14

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

PREPARED BY: ER. SHARAT MAHARJAN