ICS 103

Programming in C
Lecture 2

Dr. Mohammed Mahdi Al-Wosaby

University of Hail
College of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Programming in C
(ICS-103)
 Lecture 2

Introduction to C
Most of the slide material are copied from

https://www.tutorialspoint.com/cprogramming/index.h
tm
:Useful link
https://developerinsider.co/c-and-cpp-insider/
2https://www.w3schools.com/c/index.php 07/06/2025
Overview
 C is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative
computer programming language developed in 1972
by Dennis M. Ritchie at the Bell Telephone
Laboratories to develop the UNIX operating system.
 C was originally first implemented on the DEC PDP-
11 computer in 1972.
 It keeps fluctuating at number one scale of
popularity along with Java programming language,
which is also equally popular and most widely used
among modern software programmers.

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Overview
 C has now become a widely used
professional language for various
reasons −
 Easy to learn
 Structured language

 It produces efficient programs

 It can handle low-level activities

 It can be compiled on a variety of computer

platforms
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Facts about C
 C was invented to write an operating system called UNIX.
 C is a successor of B language which was introduced around
the early 1970s.
 The language was formalized in 1988 by the American
National Standard Institute (ANSI).
 The UNIX OS was totally written in C.
 Today C is the most widely used and popular System
Programming Language.
 Most of the state-of-the-art software have been implemented
using C.
 Today's most popular Linux OS and RDBMS MySQL have
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been written in C.
Why use C?
 C was initially used for system development work, particularly
the programs that make-up the operating system.
 Some examples of the use of C might be −

 Operating Systems

 Language Compilers

 Assemblers

 Text Editors

 Print Spoolers

 Network Drivers

 Modern Programs

 Databases

 Language Interpreters

6  Utilities
C - Environment Setup
 Text Editor
 This will be used to type your program. Examples of few a editors
include Windows Notepad, Notepad++, OS Edit command, Brief,
Epsilon, EMACS, and vim or vi.
 The C Compiler
 The source code written in source file is the human readable source for
your program. It needs to be "compiled", into machine language so that
your CPU can actually execute the program as per the instructions
given.
 The compiler compiles the source codes into final executable
programs.
 Installation on Windows

To install GCC on Windows, you need to install MinGW. To install
MinGW, go to the MinGW homepage, www.mingw.org, and follow the
7 link to the MinGW download page.
C - Program Structure
 A C program basically consists of the following
parts −
 Preprocessor Commands
 Functions
 Variables
 Statements & Expressions
 Comments

 Let us look at a simple code that would print the

words "Hello World" −

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C - Program Structure
1. #include <stdio.h>
2. int main() {
3. /* my first program in C */
4. printf("Hello, World! \n");
5. return 0;
}

Let us take a look at the various parts of the above

program:
1) The first line of the program #include <stdio.h> is a preprocessor
command, which tells a C compiler to include stdio.h file before going
to actual compilation.

2) The next line int main() is the main function where the program
execution begins.

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C - Program Structure
3) The next line /*...*/ will be ignored by the compiler and it
has been put to add additional comments in the program.
So such lines are called comments in the program.

4) The next line printf(...) is another function available in C

which causes the message "Hello, World!" to be displayed on
the screen.

5) The next line return 0; terminates the main() function

and returns the value 0.

 Compile and Execute C Program

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The main Function
 int main(void) marks the beginning of the main
function where program execution begins.
 Every C program has a main function.
 Braces { and } mark the beginning and end of the
body of function main.
 A function body has two parts:
 Declarations - tell the compiler what memory cells
are needed in the function
 Executable statements - (derived from the
algorithm) are translated into machine language and
later executed by the computer
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C - Basic Syntax
 You have seen the basic structure of a C program, so it will
be easy to understand other basic building blocks of the C
programming language.
 Tokens in C
 A C program consists of various tokens and a token is either a
keyword, an identifier, a constant, a string literal, or a symbol. For
example, the following C statement consists of five tokens −
printf("Hello, World! \n");
 The individual tokens are −

printf
(
"Hello, World! \n“
)
12 ;
C - Basic Syntax
 Semicolons
 In a C program, the semicolon is a statement
terminator. That is, each individual statement
must be ended with a semicolon. It indicates the
end of one logical entity.
 Given below are two different statements −

Printf "Hello, World! \n“ ;

return 0;

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C - Basic Syntax
 Comments
 Comments provide supplementary information making
it easier for us to understand the program, but are
ignored by the C compiler.
 Two forms of comments:
 /* */ - anything between them with be considered a
comment, even if they span multiple lines.
 // - anything after this and before the end of the line is
considered a comment.
 Comments are used to create Program Documentation
 Information that help others read and understand the
program.
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C - Basic Syntax
 Identifiers
 A C identifier is a name used to identify a variable, function,
or any other user-defined item.
 An identifier starts with a letter A to Z, a to z, or an underscore
'_' followed by zero or more letters, underscores, and digits
(0 to 9).
 C does not allow punctuation characters such as @, $, and
% within identifiers.
 C is a case-sensitive programming language. Thus,
Manpower and manpower are two different identifiers in C.
 Here are some examples of acceptable identifiers −
mohd zara abc move_name a_123
myname50 _temp j a23b9 retVal
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C - Basic Syntax
 Keywords
 The following list shows the reserved words in C.
 These reserved words may not be used as constants or
variables or any other identifier names.
auto else long switch
break enum register typedef
case extern return union
char float short unsigned
const for signed void
continue goto sizeof volatile
default if static while
do int struct Packed_
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C - Basic Syntax
 Whitespace in C
 A line containing only whitespace, possibly with a
comment, is known as a blank line, and a C compiler
totally ignores it.
 Whitespace is the term used in C to describe blanks,
tabs, newline characters and comments.
 Whitespace separates one part of a statement from
another and enables the compiler to identify where
one element in a statement, such as int, ends and the
next element begins.
int age;
fruit = apples + oranges; // get the total fruit
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C - Basic Syntax
 White Space Example:

Bad: Good:
int main(void) int main(void)
{ int foo,blah; {
scanf("%d",&foo); int foo, blah;
blah=foo+1; scanf("%d", &foo);
printf("%d", blah); blah = foo + 1;
return 0;} printf("%d", blah);
return 0;
}

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Bad Programming practices
 Missing statement of purpose
 Inadequate commenting
 Variables names are not meaningful
 Use of unnamed constant.
 Indentation does not represent program structure
 Algorithm is inefficient or difficult to follow
 Program does not compile
 Program produces incorrect results.
 Insufficient testing (e.g. Test case results are different than
expected, program branch never executed, borderline case
not tested etc.)
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Other Styles Concerns
 Properly comment your code
 Give variables meaningful names
 Prompt the user when you want to input data
 Display things in a way that looks good
 Insert new lines to make your information
more readable.
 Format numbers in a way that makes sense
for the application

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C - Data Types
 Data types in c refer to an extensive system used for declaring
variables or functions of different types.
 The type of a variable determines how much space it occupies
in storage and how the bit pattern stored is interpreted.
 The types in C can be classified as follows −

Basic Types

They are arithmetic types and are further classified into:

integer types.

floating-point types.

The type void

The type specifier void indicates that no value is available.

Derived types

(a) Pointer types, (b) Array types, (c) Structure types, (d) Union types
and (e) Function types.

Enumerated types
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C Data Types

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Integer Types
 The following table provides the details of standard integer
types with their storage sizes and value ranges
Type Storage size Value range
char byte 1 to 127 128-
short bytes 2 to 32,767 32,768-
int bytes 4 to 2,147,483,648-
2,147,483,647
long bytes 8 -9×1018 to +9×1018

 To get the exact size of a type or a variable on a particular

platform, you can use the sizeof operator.
 The expressions sizeof (type) yields the storage size of the
object or type in bytes.
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Integer Types
 Given below is an example to get the size of int type
on any machine
#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
int main()
{
printf("Storage size for int : %d \n", sizeof(int));
return 0;
}

 When you compile and execute the above program,

it produces the following result on Linux

Storage size for int : 4

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Floating-Point Types
 The following table provide the details of standard
floating-point types with storage sizes and value
ranges and their precision −
Type Storage size Value range Precision
float byte 4 1.2E-38 to decimal 6
3.4E+38 places
double byte 8 2.3E-308 to decimal 15
1.7E+308 places
long double byte 10 3.4E-4932 to decimal 19
1.1E+4932 places

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The void Type
 Function returns as void
 There are various functions in C which do not return any
value or you can say they return void. A function with no
return value has the return type as void. For example, void
exit (int status);
 Function arguments as void
 There are various functions in C which do not accept any
parameter. A function with no parameter can accept a void.
For example, int rand(void);
 Pointers to void
 A pointer of type void * represents the address of an object,
but not its type. For example, a memory allocation function
void *malloc( size_t size ); returns a pointer to void which
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can be casted to any data type.
C - Variables
 A variable is nothing but a name given to a storage
area that our programs can manipulate.
 Each variable in C has a specific type, which

determines the size and layout of the variable's

memory; the range of values that can be stored within
that memory; and the set of operations that can be
applied to the variable.
 The name of a variable can be composed of letters,

digits, and the underscore character.

 It must begin with either a letter or an underscore.

 Upper and lowercase letters are distinct because C is

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case-sensitive.
C - Variables
 The following is the basic variable types

Type Description
char Typically a single octet(one byte). This is an
.integer type
int The most natural size of integer for the
.machine
float .A single-precision floating point value
double .A double-precision floating point value
void .Represents the absence of type

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Variable Definition in C
 A variable definition tells the compiler where and how much
storage to create for the variable.
 A variable definition specifies a data type and contains a list of one
or more variables of that type as follows −
type variable_list;
 type must be a valid C data type including char, w_char, int, float,
double, bool, or any user-defined object; and
 variable_list may consist of one or more identifier names separated
by commas.
 Some valid declarations are shown here

int i, j, k;
char c, ch;
float f, salary;
29 double d;
Variables Initialization
 Variables can be initialized (assigned an initial value) in their
declaration. The initializer consists of an equal sign followed
by a constant expression as follows:
type variable_name = value;
 Some examples are −
int d = 3, f = 5; // definition and initializing d and f.
byte z = 22; // definition and initializes z.
char x = 'x'; // the variable x has the value 'x'.

 For definition without an initializer: variables with static

storage duration are implicitly initialized with NULL (all bytes
have the value 0); the initial value of all other variables are
undefined.

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C - Constants & Literals
 Constants refer to fixed values that the program may
not alter during its execution.
 Constants can be of any of the basic data types like
an integer constant, a floating constant, a character
constant, or a string literal.
 There are enumeration constants as well.
 Constants are treated just like regular variables
except that their values cannot be modified after
their definition.

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Defining Constants
 There are two simple ways in C to define
constants −
 Using #define preprocessor.
 Using const keyword.
 The #define Preprocessor
 Given below is the form to use #define
preprocessor to define a constant −
#define identifier value
 The next slide example explains it in detail −

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The #define Preprocessor Example
#include <stdio.h>
#define LENGTH 10
#define WIDTH 5
#define NEWLINE '\n'

int main() {
int area;

area = LENGTH * WIDTH;

printf("value of area : %d", area);
printf("%c", NEWLINE);

return 0;
}

 When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces

the following result − value of area : 50
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Assignment Statement
 Stores a value or a computational result in a
variable
variable = expression;
= is the Assignment Operator
 The assignment statement computes the expression
that appears after the assignment operator and
stores its value in the variable that appears to
the left.

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The printf Function

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Placeholders
 Placeholders always begin with the symbol %
 % marks the place in a format string where a value
will be printed out or will be read
 Format strings can have multiple placeholders, if
you are printing multiple values
Variable
Placeholder Function Use
Type
c% char printf / scanf
d% int printf / scanf
f% double printf
lf% double scanf
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Displaying Prompts
 When input data is needed in an interactive
program, you should use the printf function to
display a prompting message, or prompt, that tells
the user what data to enter.

printf("Enter the distance in miles> ");

printf("Enter the object mass in grams> ");

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The scanf Function
function Number
name function arguments Entered 30.5
miles
scanf("%lf", &miles);
30.5
place holders input variables
 The & is the address operator. It tells scanf the address of
variable miles in memory.
 When user inputs a value, it is stored in miles.
 The placeholder %lf tells scanf the type of data to store into
variable miles.

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return Statement
 Syntax: return expression ;
 Example: return (0);
 Returning from the main function terminates the
program and transfers control back to the operating
system. Value returned is 0.
 The return statement transfers control from a
function back to the caller.
 Once you start writing your own functions, you will
use the return statement to return the result of a
function back to the caller.

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Lecture Summary
 C was originally first implemented on the DEC PDP-
11 computer in 1972.
 A variable definition tells the compiler where and
how much storage to create for the variable.
 The assignment statement computes the expression
that appears after the assignment operator and
stores its value in the variable that appears to the
left.
 Placeholders always begin with the symbol %

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