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Programming in C: Introduction To C Language

The document provides an overview of the C programming language, including its history, classification as a high-level language, and key features such as portability and support for pointers. It also discusses the structure of a C program, constants, variables, identifiers, keywords, and data types. Additionally, it explains the differences between low-level and high-level languages, as well as the roles of language translators like compilers and interpreters.

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Dousik Manokaran
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10 views6 pages

Programming in C: Introduction To C Language

The document provides an overview of the C programming language, including its history, classification as a high-level language, and key features such as portability and support for pointers. It also discusses the structure of a C program, constants, variables, identifiers, keywords, and data types. Additionally, it explains the differences between low-level and high-level languages, as well as the roles of language translators like compilers and interpreters.

Uploaded by

Dousik Manokaran
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Programming in C

Introduction to C Language
 The language of computers is – 0s and 1s.
 Languages can be broadly classified into two categories – Low-
Level languages (such as Machine Language, etc.) and High-Level
languages (such as C, C++, etc.).
 C language was developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 at Bell
Laboratories.
 C is a successor of the B language.
 C is the most popular and widely-used programming language.
 After it’s development, it was standardized by ANSI in 1989.
 C is a compiler-based language.
 The C program is written in a .c file. Then, a compiler converts the
high-level code to bunch of zeros and ones (object code), which
the machine can understand.

Low-Level vs. High-Level Languages


Low-Level High-Level

Machine Languages (Purely based on 0s Takes entire source code


and 1s) and converts to machine
 Can be directly executed. code.

Assembly Languages (Allows use of


certain symbols) Either by using a compiler
 Assembler converts the code to or interpreter.
machine language.

Independent of
Dependent on Architecture. Architecture but might be
OS dependent.
Language Translators
 There are three types of language translators:
o Assembler (Converts Assembly Language to Machine Code)
o Compiler (Converts High-Level Language)
o Interpreter (Converts High-Level Language)
 The difference between compiler and interpreter is, compiler
executes the program after complete translation, whereas
interpreter converts and executes parallelly, line-by-line.
 Compiler creates an object code while interpreter directly gives the
output.

Features of C Language
 It’s a High-Level Language.
 It’s a small language with only 32 keywords.
 Most of the languages are dependent on C.
 It’s portable.
 It has a few built-in functions and operators.
 It has access to pointers.
 It’s an extensible, structured and modular language.
 It allows dynamic memory allocation paradigms.
 It’s compilation and execution is faster.
 It’s a case sensitive language.
 It’s used to develop and operate embedded systems. That’s why
it’s also known as system programming language.

Structure of a C Program
1. Documentation Section – Compiler ignores this part. It is solely
done to help the fellow developers out.
a. Single Line Comment - //
b. Multiple Line Comments - /* … */
2. Link Section – Basically importing header files (aka libraries) to use
the functions.
a. #include<stdio.h>
b. #include<conio.h>
c. #include<math.h>
d. #include<string.h>
e. #include<stdlib.h>
3. Definition Section - #define variable_name value
4. Global Declaration Section – Declaring global variables (outside the
functions).
5. Main Section – Code control always goes to the main function first.
(datatype main() { … }).
6. Sub-program functions – User defined functions.

Execution Process of a C Program


Constants in C
 There are two main types of constants in C:
o Numeric Constants
 Integer Constants
 Decimal (Default)
 Octal
 Hexadecimal
 Floating/Real Constants
o Character Constants
 Single Character Constants
 String Constants
 C supports typecasting - ASCII.
 “a” is not same as ‘a’ in C.
 It is generally recommended to capitalize the constants.

Variables in C
 Variables are basically a named memory location which is used to
store a value of a data.
 First step to creating a variable is declaring the datatype of the
variable names.
 Example: char, int, float, double, etc.
 The datatype of a variable cannot be void.
 Variable names cannot have spaces or special characters. It can
also not start with a number or underscore.

Identifiers and Keywords in C


 Reserved, pre-defined words are known as keywords.
 In ASCII C, there are 32 keywords.
 Some examples include, int, float, break, goto, if, for, etc.
 Keywords cannot be used as identifiers.
 Identifiers, as the name suggests, identifies user-defined entities –
variables, functions, etc.
 Some rules to creating identifiers are:
o It can consist of alphabets, numbers and underscore. It
cannot contain any special characters.
o The first character can be alphabets and, in some compilers,
underscore too. But it cannot start with a number.
o It cannot be a keyword.

Datatypes in C
 Datatypes denote the type of data and size of memory to be
allocated.
 There are three types of data types:
o Primary – Built-in/fundamental
 Examples: int, float, char, void, double
o Derived – Derived using primary data types, etc.
 Examples: array, structure, union and pointers
o User-defined – typedef and enumerated.
 int – short int and long int + unsigned int and signed int (4
qualifiers - common).
 The size of the datatype depends upon the compilers in some
cases. To get the size, run: printf(“%d”, sizeof(int)).

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