Lecture One:

Principles of Programming
CSU 07209

Mr. Peter Kaaya (PhD*-JKUAT), Assistant Lecturer

 Introduction to C programming

• C is a programming language developed at AT

& T’s Bell Laboratories of USA in 1972.
• It was designed and written by a Dennis
Ritchie. In the late seventies C began to
replace the more familiar languages of that
time like ALGOL.
• ANSI C standard emerged in the early
1980s
 cont
• the software tool as well as the C compiler is
written in C. Major parts of popular operating
systems like Windows, UNIX, Linux is still
written in C.
• This is because even today when it comes to
performance (speed of execution) nothing
beats C.
• C seems so popular is because it is reliable,
simple and easy to use
 Stages in evolution of C language
Year Language Developed by Remarks
1960 ALGOL International committee Too general, too abstract
1963 CPL Cambridge university Hard to learn, difficult to implement
1967 BCPL Martin Richards at Could deal only with specific
Cambridge University problems
1970 B Ken Thompson at AT&T Could deal only with specific
problems
1972 C Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Lost generality of BCPL and B restored

• C stand between Problem oriented languages (high level

languages) e.g. FOTRAN,COBOL, BASIC,PASCAL and
machine oriented language (low level languages)-
designed to better machine efficiency.
• Its called middle level language
 cont
• often heard today is – “C has been already
superseded by languages like C++, C# and
Java.
• C is a language , every language starts from a
Character set.
• C has 256 Characters, it’s a big number. It is
based on mathematics, english and Science
 Program
• There is a close analogy between learning
English language and learning C language.
• The classical method of learning English is to:
– first learn the alphabets used in the language,
– learn to combine these alphabets to form word
– alphabets are combined to form sentences and
– sentences are combined to form paragraphs.
 Cont..
• Learning C is similar and easier. Instead of
straight-away learning how to write programs,
we must first know:
• what alphabets, numbers and special symbols are
used in C,
• how constants, variables and keywords are
constructed, and
• how are these combined to form an instruction.
• A group of instructions would be combined later
on to form a program
• a computer program is just a collection of the
instructions necessary to solve a specific problem.
The basic operations of a computer system form
what is known as the computer’s instruction set.
– And the approach/method used to solve the problem is
known as an algorithm.
 cont
• So for as programming language concern
these are of two types.
• 1) Low level language
• 2) High level language
 Low level language:
• Low level languages are machine level and assembly
level language.
• In machine level language computer only
understand digital numbers i.e. 0 and 1
• instruction given to the computer is in the form
binary digit, which is difficult to implement
instruction in binary code 0 & 1.
 Cont..
• The assembly language is on other hand modified
version of machine level language.
• Where instructions are given in English like word as
ADD, SUM, DIV etc. It is easy to write and
understand but not understood by the machine.
• So the translator used here is assembler to
translate into machine level.
 High level language:
• These languages are machine independent, means
it is portable.
• The language in this category is Pascal, Cobol,
Fortran etc.
• High level languages are understood by the
machine. So it needs to be translated by the
translator into machine level.
• A translator is software which is used to translate
high level language as well as low level language in
to machine level language.
 Types of translators
• Compiler
• Interpreter
• Assembler
• Compiler and interpreter are used to convert the
high level language into machine level language.
• The program written in high level language is known
as source program and the corresponding machine
level language program is called as object program.
• Both compiler and interpreter perform the same
task but their working is different.
• Compiler read the program at-a-time and searches
the error and lists them.
• If the program is error free then it is converted into
object program.
– When program size is large then compiler is preferred.
• Interpreter read only one line of the source code
and convert it to object code.
– It checks error, statement by statement and hence of
take more time.
– An assembler is a program that converts
assembly language into machine code.
– Assemblers are similar to compilers in that they produce
executable code
 C Characters
• C programming has 256 Characters from:
• a-z (26)
• A-Z (26)
• a‡A (lowercase not equal to uppercases)
• Digits 0-9 (10)
• Special symbols on the keyboard & that are not on
the keyboard
 Constants in C
• Constant is a any value that cannot be changed
during program execution.
• In C, any number, single character, or character
string is known as a constant.
• A constant is an entity that doesn’t change whereas
a variable is an entity that may change.
• C constants can be divided into two major
categories:
– Primary Constants
– Secondary Constants
 Constants in C contd…
Types of Constants:
a) Integer Constants: Whole numbers with no decimal points
e.g. 5 -5
Rules for constructing Integer constants:
b)An integer constant must have at least one digit
c)It must not have a decimal point
d)It could be either positive/negative
e)If no sign precedes, an integer constant is assumed to be
positive
f) No comas/blanks are allowed within an integer constant
g)The allowable range for integer constant is -32768 to 32768
 Real/Floating point constants
a) They could be written in two forms: fractional and
exponential form
b) Rules:
a) A real constant must have at least one digit
b) It must have a decimal point
c) It could be either positive/negative
d) Default sign is positive
e) No commas/blanks are allowed within a real constant
e.g. 426.0, -32.76,-48.5792
 Character Constants
 Are single alphabet,single digit or a single special symbol
enclosed within single inverted commas.
 E.g. ‘a’ is a valid constant while a is not
 Are any single character from 256 characters and enclosed
with ‘ ’ (single quotes)
 E.g. Valid char (‘a’, ‘%’, ‘5’)
 Invalid char (B,’atc15$’)
– The maximum length of a character constant can
be 1 character e.g. ‘A’,’I’,’5’,’=‘
 String Constants
Are any single/multiple character enclosed from
256 characters and are enclosed with “ “
(double quotes) e.g. “atc12@”
NB: char is not equal to String i.e ‘5’(char) is not
equal to “5”(string), 5(int) is not equal to 5.0
(float)
e) Octal constants
They are base 8 numbers
Their valid characters 0-7
You have to prefix 0 to present an octal constant
e.g. a valid octal- (0756) invalid octal (756)

f) Hexadecimal constants: it is base 16 number, valid

characters are 0-9 & A-F. in C, to present hexadecimal
constant you have to prefix 0X
e.g. valid hexadecimal (0X2345D4DMK), invalid hexa
 KEYWORDS
• All predefined words of C language are called
keywords.
• Are the words whose meaning has already
been explained to C compiler
• There are only 32 keywords in C
• E.g. int, char, if, else, switch, for, break etc.
• Not everything is predefined, sometimes a
programmer can define his/her own keyword
• There are certain words reserved for doing
specific task, these words are known as
reserved word or keywords.
• These words are predefined and always
written in lower case or small letter.
Auto Double Union If Default Static Typedef

Break Else far Int For signed Struct

Case Enum goto Long Short while Switch
Char Exert unsigned Near Void Continue
Const Float Register Do Return
 Identifiers
• All programmers defined keywords are called identifiers.
• user defined word used to name entities like variables,
arrays, functions, structures etc.
• Rules for naming identifiers:
– name should only consists of alphabets (both upper and lower
case), digits and underscore (_) sign.
– first characters should be alphabet or underscore
– name should not be a keyword
– since C is a case sensitive, the upper case and lower case
considered differently, for example code, Code, CODE etc. are
different identifiers.
– identifiers are generally given in some meaningful name such
 Identifier naming rules
1. An identifier cant be a keyword
2. The allowed character in an identifier are a-z,
A-Z,0-9 and _. No other special symbols are
allowed.
3. The first character of an identifier cant be a
number.
Valid identifier Invalid identifier
Age_19 Age 19
AGE_19 AGE &19
_AGE19 19age
 summary
• Historical background of C
• Types of programming language
• Types of translators (Compiler, interpreter, assembler)
• C characters
• Constants
• Keywords
• identifiers