 Course Instructor

 Nandini P

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Importance of the Subject
• ‘C is the base language of any other
programming language.
• To be a Good Programmer one must know
fundamentals of C programming language.

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History of ‘C’

 Root of the modern language is ALGOL 1960.

 It’s first computer language to use a block structure.
 It gave concept of structured programming.
 In 1967, Martin Richards developed a language, BCPL (Basic
Combined Programming Language)

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In 1970,by Ken Thompson created a language
called as ‘B’. It used to create early version of Unix.

 In 1972,by Dennis Ritchie introduced new language

called as ‘C’ at Bell laboratory

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Features Of ‘C’
 It is a robust language.
General purpose high level language.
Programs written in ‘C’ are efficient and fast.
(Because of variety of data types and powerful operators)
 Highly Portable. (related to OS)
Well suited for structured programming.
Ability to extend itself.
Core language
 Documentation section
 Link Section
 Definition Section
 Global Declaration Section
 main() function section
 {
 Declaration part
 Executable part
 }
 Subprogram section
 Function1
 Function2 … ( user defined function)

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[Comments ]
Pre-processor Directives
[Global Declarations]
[Function Declarations]
main()
{
Declaration Section
Executable Section
}
 
 
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[Comments ]
Pre-processor Directives
[Global Declarations]
[Function Declarations]
main()
{
Declaration Section
Executable Section
}
 
 
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• consists of a set of comment lines giving the short description explaining the
purpose of each statement or set of statements in a program.
• These comments are useful to the programmer to understand the logic of the
program but are ignored by the compiler.
• Any comment must start with two characters
• Block Line Comments /* and end with */ .
• Single line comments are //
• The symbols /* marks the beginning of the comment and */ marks the end of
the comment.
• The symbols /* and */ are called comment delimiters.
• For eg: /* first C program*/
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• The preprocessor statements start with the symbol # symbol.
• These statements instruct the compiler to include some of the files in the
beginning of the program.
• For example,
• #include<stdio.h>
• #include<math.h> are the files that the compiler includes in the beginning of
the program. Using the preprocessor directive the user can define the constants
also.
• For example,
• #define MAX 1024
• #define PI 3.1417
• Here MAX and PI are called symbolic constants. 10
In C program execution starts from the function main which
can be written as “void main()” or “int main()”

-if void main() is used –no need of return type

-if int main() is used-need to have return type

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• A series of statements that perform a specific action will be enclosed

within braces { and } and present immediately after the program header

is called the body of the program.

• The body of the program contains two essential parts

• Declaration section

• Execution section

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• These are the building blocks of the program.

• They represent the instructions given to the computer to perform a

specific task.

• The instructions can be input/output statements, simple assignment

statements, control statements etc.

• Each executable statement must end with a “ ; ”.

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The statement which instructs the compiler to display or print
the string, expression value or variable value to the console
device is called print statement.

print(): This function prints the data stored in specified

memory location

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simple forms of printf () statement:

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 The General form of printf is:
printf(“control strings”,arg1,arg2,arg3……..argn);

 The general form of scanf is:

scanf(“control strings”,arg1,arg2,arg3……..argn);

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/*Documentation Section: program to find the sum of
two numbers*/
#include <stdio.h> /* Pre-processor Directives */
int result; /*global declaration section*/
main()
{
int a,b; /*declaration part*/
printf("Enter two numbers for a and b"); /*
executable part starts here*/
scanf("%d%d",&a,&b);
result= a + b;
printf("The result is=%d",result);
}

LJD, DEPT OF CSE, SJEC 21

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 It contains source code of the program
 File extension is .c
 main() is the staring point of execution

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 While working with large projects, need to
separate subroutine from the main()
 So option for this is make subroutine and

store them in a different file known as header

file
 Compile the source code of the subroutine

and then link to the object file in which

subroutine are required.

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 They are generated by compiler after
processing source file
 Contains binary code(.obj file)
 Linker uses this object file to produce an

executable file(.exe file)

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 Generated by linker which links various object
Files to produce executable file

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 Create a program
 Compiling the program
 Linking the programs with functions
 Executing the program

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 Process certain kinds of data and provide
output known as information
 Task is accomplished by executing

instructions called program

 Instructions are formed using rigid rules

called syntax rules

 C has its own vocabulary and grammar

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 C Character set is a collection of characters supported in C
programming language.
 C Programming language has a rich set of characters which are used
to construct c program instructions.
 Alphabets
C Language supports all alphabets of English. It supports both
UPPERCASE & lowercase letters
 Digits
C Language supports 10 digits to construct numbers. Those 10 digits
are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9
 Special Symbols
C supports a rich set of special symbols that include symbols to
perform mathematical operations, condition checking, white space,
back space, etc…

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 In C Programming Language, the character set
follow ASCII (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange) code text format.
 - Every character in C language has the

respective ASCII value which is used to convert

a character into Binary language.

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 In a passage of text individual words and
punctuations called tokens
 In c smallest individual units are known as C

tokens
 6 types and programs written using these

tokens

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Keywords :

- Every keyword is classified as either keyword or

identifiers
- All keywords have fixed meanings

- Keywords serves a building block of program

statements.
- Written in lowercase

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- Identifiers refer to the names of variables, functions and arrays
- User-defined names consists of sequence of letters and digits
with letter as first character
- Allow both upper and lowercase as well as underscore
- Rules for Identifiers:-
 1. First character must be an alphabet
 2. Must consists of only letters, digits or underscore
 3. Only first 31 characters are significant
 4. Cannot use a keywords
 5. Must not contain white space

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 Refers to fixed values that do not change
during execution of program

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Integer constants:
Integer constant-3 types of integer
1. Decimal(0 through 9,preceded by optional –or
+ sign)
2. Octal(digits from 0 through 7 with leading 0)
3. Hexadecimal(digits preceded by 0x or 0X and
includes alphabets A through F which represent
numbers 10 through 15)

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• Using integer numbers it is inadequate to represent
quantities like distances, heights, temperatures, prices…etc
• These quantities can be represented by numbers containing
fractional parts like 12.567,Such numbers are called real
constants
• Real numbers also represented in exponential notation by
format:0.6e4,10e-1,-1.4E-1
mantissa e exponent
• Exponent can be written in either plus or minus sign
• Letter ‘e’ separating the mantissa and exponent can either
lowercase or uppercase
• White space is not allowed

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Single character constants
 Contains single character enclosed within a pair of

single quote marks

 Example: ’5’, ’X’

 Character constants have integer values as ASCII values

String Constants
 sequence of characters enclosed in double quotes

 Example: ”Hello”,”1986”

 Blank spaces are allowed in both constants

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• Data name used to store a data value
• Take different values at different times during execution
• Name should be meaningful to reflect its function
• Conditions:
1. Begin with letter but some systems permit underscore as first
character
2. Recognizes a length of 31 characters but first eight characters
are significant
3. Upper and lowercase are significant
4. It should not be a keyword
5. White space is not allowed

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