First C Program

Visit to more Learning Resources

 A Simple C Program
1 /* Fig. 2.1: fig02_01.c
2 A first program in C */
3 #include <stdio.h>
4
5 int main()
6 {
7 printf( "Welcome to C!\n" );
8
9 return 0;
10 }
Welcome to C!

 Comments
– Text surrounded by /* and */ is ignored by computer
– Used to describe program
 #include <stdio.h>
– Preprocessor directive
• Tells computer to load contents of a certain file
– <stdio.h> allows standard input/output operations
 A Simple C Program, Cont.
 int main()
– C programs contain one or more functions,
exactly one of which must be main
– Parenthesis used to indicate a function
– int means that main "returns" an integer
value
– Braces ({ and }) indicate a block
• The bodies of all functions must be contained in
braces
 2.2 A Simple C Program:
Printing a Line of Text
 Return 0;
– A way to exit a function
– Return 0, in this case, means that the
program terminated normally
 Running the Program on Linux
With gcc
 Use emacs, vi, or some other text editor to
type in and save program. Good idea to:
– Name program something meaningful
– Establish conventions for naming
– Add a .c suffix to the name
 Compile program
– gcc hello.c [-o whatever]
 Running on Linux
 This produces the executable named whatever, or
a.out by default.
 Type executable name to run.
– Examples.
• a.out.
• whatever.
• ./a.out.
• Etc.
 Note: linker will be required when our programs
become more sophisticated – not necessary now.
 Second C Program

User variables, reading user input

1 /* Fig. 2.5: fig02_05.c
2 Addition program */
3 #include <stdio.h>
4
5 int main()
1. Initialize
6
7
{
int integer1, integer2, sum; /* declaration */
variables
8
9 printf( "Enter first integer\n" ); /* prompt */
10
11
scanf( "%d", &integer1 ); /* read an integer */
printf( "Enter second integer\n" ); /* prompt */
2. Input
12 scanf( "%d", &integer2 ); /* read an integer */
13 sum = integer1 + integer2; /* assignment of sum */
14 printf( "Sum is %d\n", sum ); /* print sum */
15 2.1 Sum
16 return 0; /* indicate that program ended successfully */
17 }

Enter first integer 3. Print

45
Enter second integer
72
Sum is 117
C Data Types
 What do program instructions
look like?
 A simple program has at least these three
main parts
– variable declaration
– variable initialization
– main body
 Variables in Programming
 Represent storage units in a program
 Used to store/retrieve data over life of program
 Type of variable determines what can be placed in
the storage unit
 Assignment – process of placing a particular value
in a variable
 Variables must be declared before they are
assigned
 The value of a variable can change; A constant
always has the same value
 Naming variables
 When a variable is declared it is given a name
 Good programming practices
– Choose a name that reflects the role of the variable in a
program, e.g.
• Good: customer_name, ss_number;
• Bad : cn, ss;
– Don’t be afraid to have long names if it aids in
readability
 Restrictions
– Name must begin with a letter; otherwise, can contain
digits or any other characters. C is CASE SENSITIVE!
Use 31 or fewer characters to aid in portability
 Variable Declaration
 All variables must be declared in a C
program before the first executable
statement! Examples:
main(){
int a, b, c;
float d;
/* Do something here */
}
 C Variable Names
 Variable names in C may only consist of
letters, digits, and underscores and may not
begin with a digit
 Variable names in C are case sensitive
 ANSI standard requires only 31 or fewer
characters. Enhances portability to follow
this rule
 Should be very descriptive
 Variable assignment
 After variables are declared, they must
(should) be given values. This is called
assignment and it is done with the ‘=‘
operator. Examples:
float a, b;
int c;
b = 2.12;
c = 200;
 Basic C variable types
 There are four basic data types in C:
– char
• A single byte capable of holding one character in
the local character set.
– int
• An integer of unspecified size
– float
• Single-precision floating point
– double
• Double-precision floating point
 char variable type
 Represents a single byte (8 bits) of storage
 Can be signed or unsigned
 Internally char is just a number
 Numerical value is associated with character via a
character set.
 ASCII character set used in ANSI C
 Question: what is the difference between:
– printf(“%c”, someChar);
– printf(“%d”, someChar);
 int variable type
 Represents a signed integer of typically 4 or
8 bytes (32 or 64 bits)
 Precise size is machine-dependent
 Question: What are the maximum and
minimum sizes of the following:
– 32-bit unsigned int
– 32-bit signed int
– 64-bit signed/unsigned int
 What happens if these limits are exceeded?
 float and double variable types
 Represent typically 32 and/or 64 bit real
numbers
 How these are represented internally and
their precise sizes depend on the
architecture. We won’t obsess over this
now.
 Question: How large can a 64-bit float be?
 Question: How many digits of precision
does a 64-bit float have?
 Additional variable types
 Note that other types can be constructed
using the modifiers:
– short, long, signed, unsigned
 The precise sizes of these types is machine-
specific
 We will not worry about them for the time
being
 To find out the meaning of short int, etc. on
a given system, use <limits.h>
 Declaring variables
 All variables must always be declared before the
first executable instruction in a C program
 Variable declarations are always:
– var_type var_name;
• int age;
• float annual_salary;
• double weight, height; /* multiple vars ok */
 In most cases, variables have no meaningful value
at this stage. Memory is set aside for them, but
they are not meaningful until assigned.
 Assigning values to Variables
 Either when they are declared, or at any
subsequent time, variables are assigned
values using the “=“ operator.
 Examples
int age = 52; //joint declaration/assignment
double salary;
salary = 150000.23;
age = 53; //value may change at any time
 Assignment, cont.
 Be careful to assign proper type – contract
between declaration and assignments must be
honored
– int x=2.13 /* what is the value of x? */
– double x = 3; /* is this ok? */
– char c = 300; /* 300 > 1 byte; what happens? */
 General advice
– Don’t obsess too much over this at beginning
– Keep it simple, stick to basic data types
– We will be more pedantic later in the course
 Structure of a C program
 So far our C programs are as follows:
/* description of program */
#include <stdio.h>
/* any other includes go here */
int main(){
/* program body */
return 0;
}

 Let’s learn more about the structure of “program

body”
 Program Body - declarations
 Always begins with all variable declarations.
Some examples:
int a, b, c; /* declare 3 ints named a,b,c */
int d, e; /* similar to above in two steps */
int f;
int g = 1, h, k=3;
double pi = 3.1415926;
 Reading note: K&R mentions that integers can be
assigned in octal and hexadecimal as well. We
will discuss this later. Certainly, not important for
most applications.
 Statements
 Note: all statements end with a semicolon!
– Statements can (with a few exceptions) be
broken across lines or ganged on a single line
 Commas separate multiple declarations
 Blank lines have no effect
 Extra spaces between tokens has no effect.
 Comments are ignored by the compiler
 Program Body – Executable
Statements
 Executable statements always follow variable
declarations/initializations
 Executable statements include any valid C code
that is not a declaration, ie valid C code to do
things like:
– “multiply the value of a by 10 and store the result in b”
– “add 1 to the value of j and test whether it is greater
than the value of k”
– “store 5.2 in the variable x” (ie assignment)
– “print the value of x,y, and z, each on a separate line”
The printf Executable Statement
 The only executable statements we’ve seen to
this point are
– Assignments
– The printf and scanf functions
– Assignment expressions with simple operators (+, -)
 Very hard to write any program without being
able to print output. Must look at printf in more
detail to start writing useful code.
 printf(), cont.
 Sends output to standard out, which for now we
can think of as the terminal screen.
 General form
printf(format descriptor, var1, var2, …);
 format descriptor is composed of
– Ordinary characters
• copied directly to output
– Conversion specification
• Causes conversion and printing of next argument to printf
• Each conversion specification begins with %
 Printf() examples
 Easiest to start with some examples
– printf(“%s\n”, “hello world”);
• Translated: “print hello world as a string followed by a
newline character”
– printf(“%d\t%d\n”, j, k);
• Translated: “print the value of the variable j as an integer
followed by a tab followed by the value of the variable k as an
integer followed by a new line.”
– printf(“%f : %f : %f\n”, x, y, z);
• English: “print the value of the floating point variable x,
followed by a space, then a colon, then a space, etc.
 More on format statements
 The format specifier in its simplest form is one of:
– %s
• sequence of characters known as a String
• Not a fundamental datatype in C (really an array of char)
– %d
• Decimal integer (ie base ten)
– %f
• Floating point
 Note that there are many other options. These are
the most common, though, and are more than
enough to get started.
 Invisible characters
 Some special characters are not visible
directly in the output stream. These all
begin with an escape character (ie \);
– \n newline
– \t horizontal tab
– \a alert bell
– \v vertical tab
 See K&R p.38 for more details
 Arithmetic Operations
 Five simple binary arithmetic operators
1. + “plus”  c = a + b
2. - “minus”  c = a - b
3. * “times”  c = a * b
4. / “divided by” c = a/b
5. % “modulus” c = a % b
1. What are the values of c in each case above if
– int a = 10, b = 2;
– float a = 10, b = 2;
– int a = 10; float b = 2; ??
 Relational Operators
 Four basic operators for comparison of values in
C. These are typically called relational
operators:
1. > “greater than”
2. < “less than”
3. >= “greater than or equal to”
4. <= “less than or equal to”
1. For the declaration
int a=1,b=2,c;
what is the value of the following expressions?
a > b; a<b; a>=b;a<=b
 Relational Operators, cont.
 Typically used with conditional expressions, e.g.
– if (a < 1) then …
 However, also completely valid expressions which
evaluate to a result – either 1 (true) or 0 (false).
int c, a=2, b=1;
c = (a > b)
What is the value of c?
 Note: We’ll talk about order of precedence for
multipart expressions a little later. For now, we
force an order using parentheses.
 Equality Operators
 C distinguished between relational and equality
operators.
 This is mainly to clarify rules of order of
precedence.
 Two equality operators
1. == “is equal to”
2. != “is not equal to”
 These follow all of the same rules for relational
operators described on the previous slide.
 Logical Operators
 Logical Operators are used to create
compound expressions
 There are two logical operators in C
1. || “logical or”
 A compound expression formed with || evaluates
to 1 (true) if any one of its components is true
2. && “logical and”
 A compound expression formed with &&
evaluates to true if all of its components are true
 Logical Operators, cont.
 Logical operators, like relational
operators, are typically used in conditional
expressions
1. if ( (a == 1) && (b < 3) || (c == 1) ) etc.
 However, these can also be used in regular
expressions
int a = 1, b = 2, c = 3, d;
d = ( a > b ) || ( c == (b – 1) );
What is the value of d here?
 Reading keyboard input
 To be useful, program must be able to read
data from external source, e.g.
– User input from keyboard
– Database
– File
– Socket
 In next slide we cover the scanf library
function. It is like printf but reads user-
typed input rather than prints it.
 Scanf function
 In <stdio.f>, so no new #include(‘s)
 Basic syntax
– scanf( format-specifier, &var1, &var2, etc.);
– Format-specifier is identical to printf
– We do not need to understand everything here, just
enough to do some basic I/O
 Examples
– int a; scanf(“%d”,&a);
– double x; scanf(“%f”,&x);
 Blocks program until user enters input!
 Another technique for passing
data from the keyboard
 main() can also be written as
main(int argc, char *argv[])
 If main is written in this way, information can be
passed directly from the keyboard to the program
at the time of execution
– For example, we may run a program called a.out as:
PROMPT > a.out Andrew Siegel
– When a.out is run the two tokens Andrew and Siegel
are passed into the program and can be obtained by
querying argv and argc
– Note: this involves some concepts that go beyond what
we have learned so far. We will understand fully later.
 Passing data, cont.
 When this technique is used, each token is
stored as a separate element in the array
argv
 The first token passed to the program is
stored in argv[1], the second token in
argv[2], etc.
 argc stores the (integer) number of tokens
passed in
 A simple example will clarify this
 argc/argv example
 int main (int argc, char* argv[]){
printf(“%s %d %s \n”, “you entered”, argc, “arguments”);
printf(“%s: %s\n”, “the zeroth arg is the program name”, argv[0]);
printf(“%s: %s\n”, “the first argument is”, argv[1]);
printf(“%s: %s\n”, “the second argument is, argv[2]);
}
> gcc argv_example.c –o argv_example
> argv_example hello world
you entered 3 arguments
the zeroth argument is the program name: argv_example
the first argument is hello
the second argument is world
 argc/argv cont.
 Note that to do this completely generally we
would need to use a while or for loop
 We will study while loops shortly
 Also note that argv reads all arguments as
Strings (ie sequences of characters). So, we
cannot simply pass two number and add
them, for example. First, we would have to
convert to a numeric type.
 Converting String to integer
 An important function when using
argv/argc is atoi.
 atoi converts a String argument to an
integer in the following way:
int input, output;
input = atoi(argv[1]);
output = input + 1;
printf("%d\n", output);
> a.out 333
334
 Reading single characters
 Another important pair of functions for
keyboard input/output is getchar/putchar
 getchar reads a single character from the
input stream; putchar write a single
character to the standard out for example:
int c;
c = getchar(); /* blocks until data is entered
if more than one char is entered only first is read */
putchar(c); /* prints value of c to screen */
 While loops
 A simple technique for repeating a statement or
group of statements until some specified condition
is met
 General form:
while (expr){
statement1;
statement2;
.
.
}
 If expr evaluates to true (ie not 0), then perform
statement1, etc. Otherwise, skip to end of while
block.
 Repeat until expr evaluates to false (ie 0).
 While example
/* a program to loop over user input and print to screen */
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char* argv[]){
int counter; /* declarations */
counter = 1; /* executable body */
while (counter < argc){
printf("%s %d: %s\n", "argument number", counter, argv[counter]);
counter = counter + 1; /* equivalent to counter++ or ++counter */
}
return 0;
}
 If example
/* a program to loop over user input and print back to screen
with a little error checking */
int main(int argc, char *argv[]){
int counter = 1;
/* check to make sure the user entered something */
if (argc < 2){
printf("%s\n", "error; must enter at least one argument!");
exit(1); /* exit(1) will end the program */
}
/* if ok, continue as before */
while (counter < argc){
printf("%s %d: %s\n", "argument number", counter, argv[counter]);
counter = counter + 1; /* equivalent to counter++ or ++counter */
}
}
 Getchar/putchar example
/* uses getchar with while to echo user input */
#include<stdio.h>
int main(){
int c; /* holds the input character value */
c = getchar(); /* reads first character from input stream
with keyboard, this is signaled by Enter key*/
while (1){ /* loop forever */
putchar(c); /* write char to keyboard */
c = getchar(); /*get next char in stream */
}
}
 Input redirection
 Files can be sent to an input stream by using
the unix redirection command '<'. For
example, if we wish to pass input into a
program call process_text, we can do:
process_text < somefile.txt
where somefile.txt is a text file that exists in
the current directory. This sends the
contents of somefile.txt into process_text as
standard input
 What Is a Computer?
 Computer
– Device capable of performing computations
and making logical decisions
– Computers process data under the control of
sets of instructions called computer programs
 What Is a Computer, Cont.
 Hardware
– Various devices comprising a computer
– Keyboard, screen, mouse, disks, memory, CD-
ROM, and processing units
 Software
– Programs that run on a computer1.3 computer
organization
C
History of C
– Evolved by Ritchie from two previous
programming languages, BCPL and B
– Used to develop UNIX
– Used to write modern operating systems
 Hardware independent (portable)
– By late 1970's C had evolved to "traditional C"
 History of C
 Standardization
– Many slight variations of C existed, and were
incompatible
– Committee formed to create a "unambiguous,
machine-independent" definition
– Standard created in 1989, updated in 1999
 Language Types
 Three types of programming languages
1. Machine languages
• Strings of numbers giving machine specific instructions
• Example:
+1300042774
+1400593419
+1200274027
2. Assembly languages
• English-like abbreviations representing elementary computer
operations (translated via assemblers)
• Example:
Load BASEPAY
Add overpay
Store GROSSPAY
 Language Types, Cont.
1. High-level languages
• Codes similar to everyday English
• Use mathematical notations (translated via
compilers)
• Example:
grossPay = basePay + overTimePay
 High-level Languages
 “high-level” is a relative term
 C is a relatively low-level high-level
language
 Pascal, Fortran, COBOL are typical high-
level languages
 Java, Python, Perl, VB are examples of
high-level high-level languages
 Application specific languages (Matlab,
Javascript, VBScript) are even higher-level.
 C Programming Language
 What is C?
– C is a structured, relatively low-level, portable
programming language.
 Why study C?
– Many popular software tools are written in C.
– Has strongly influenced many other languages.
• C-shell, java, C++, Perl, etc.
– Forces the user to understand fundamental aspects of
programming.
– Very concise language.
 C, cont.
 Is C object-oriented?
– No. C++ (its successor) is.
 Can a non OO language be useful?
– Yes.
 Is C a hard language to learn?
– No, but it does take a little getting used to.
 What is the ANSI part?
– American national standards institute – uniform
standard definition of C for portability.
 C Data Types
 There are only a few basic data types in C:
– char
– int
– float
– double

 short, long, signed and unsigned are

additional qualifiers.
– will discuss later
 C Data types, cont.
 char
– A single byte (capable of holding one character in the
local character set).
 int
– An integer, typically reflecting the natural size of
integers on the host machine.
 float
– Single precision floating point (typically 8-bit)
 double
– Double precision floating point (typicall 4-bit)
 Suggested assignment:
– Using what you know so far, together with
appendix B11 of K&R, determine what the
variable sizes are on your platform.
– Note: you’ll need to include the <limits.h>
header file.

For more details Contact us