Scribd
Upload
58 views

Msimbazi Centre Training Institute Information and Communication Technology C-Programming Chapter 1 Overview

The document provides an overview of the C programming language. It discusses that C was created in the 1970s to develop the UNIX operating system. It describes the basic structure of C programs, including main functions, comments, and return statements. It also covers C syntax elements like tokens, identifiers, keywords, variables, and data types. The document is intended to teach beginners about setting up their environment to write basic C programs.

Uploaded by

WARDA JUMBE
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
58 views

Msimbazi Centre Training Institute Information and Communication Technology C-Programming Chapter 1 Overview

The document provides an overview of the C programming language. It discusses that C was created in the 1970s to develop the UNIX operating system. It describes the basic structure of C programs, including main functions, comments, and return statements. It also covers C syntax elements like tokens, identifiers, keywords, variables, and data types. The document is intended to teach beginners about setting up their environment to write basic C programs.

Uploaded by

WARDA JUMBE
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 6

MSIMBAZI CENTRE TRAINING INSTITUTE

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY


C-PROGRAMMING
CHAPTER 1 OVERVIEW
C is a general-purpose, high-level language that was originally developed
by Dennis M. Ritchie to develop the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs.
C was originally first implemented on the DEC PDP-11 computer in
1972.
In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie produced the first publicly
available description of C, now known as the K&R standard.
The UNIX operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX
application programs have been written in C. 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

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.

Msimbazi Centre Training Institute (MCTI)


Page 1
 Today's most popular Linux OS and RDBMS MySQL have been
written in C.

Why Use C?
C was initially used for system development work, particularly the
programs that make-up the operating system. C was adopted as a system
development language because it produces code that runs nearly as fast as
the code written in assembly language. 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
 Utilities
C Programs
A C program can vary from 3 lines to millions of lines and it should be written into
one or more text files with extension ".c"; for example, hello.c. You can use "vi",
"vim" or any other text editor to write your C program into a file.
This tutorial assumes that you know how to edit a text file and how to
write source code inside a program file.
CHAPTER 2 ENVIORNMENT SETUP
If you want to set up your environment for C programming language, you need the
following two software tools available on your computer, (a) Text Editor and (b)
The C Compiler.
Text Editor
This will be used to type your program. Examples of a few editors include
Windows Notepad, OS Edit command, Brief, Epsilon, EMACS, and vim or vi.
The name and version of text editors can vary on different operating systems. For
example, Notepad will be used on Windows, and vim or vi can be used on
Windows as well as on Linux or UNIX.

Msimbazi Centre Training Institute (MCTI)


Page 2
The files you create with your editor are called the source files and they contain the
program source codes. The source files for C programs are typically named with
the extension ".c".
Before starting your programming, make sure you have one text editor in place and
you have enough experience to write a computer program, save it in a file, compile
it and finally execute it.
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. The most
frequently used and free available compiler is the GNU C/C++ compiler, otherwise
you can have compilers either from HP or Solaris if you have the respective
operating systems.

CHAPTER 3 PROGRAM STRUCTURE


Before we study the basic building blocks of the C programming language, let us
look at a bare minimum C program structure so that we can take it as a reference in
the upcoming chapters.
Hello World Example
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":
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
/* my first program in C */
printf("Hello, World! \n");
getchar();
return 0;
}
Msimbazi Centre Training Institute (MCTI)
Page 3
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.
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.

CHAPTER 4 BASIC SYNTAX


Tokens in C
A C program consists of various tokens and a token is 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"
)
;

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;

Msimbazi Centre Training Institute (MCTI)


Page 4
Comments
Comments are like helping text in your C program and they are ignored by
the compiler. They start with /* and terminate with the characters */ as
shown below:
/* my first program in C */

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

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
double

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
Msimbazi Centre Training Institute (MCTI)
Page 5
the compiler to identify where one element in a statement, such as int, ends and the
next element begins.

Therefore, in the following statement:


int age;
there must be at least one whitespace character (usually a space) between int and
age for the compiler to be able to distinguish them.
On the other hand, in the following statement:
fruit = apples + oranges; // get the total fruit
no whitespace characters are necessary between fruit and =, or between = and
apples, although you are free to include some if you wish to increase readability.

Msimbazi Centre Training Institute (MCTI)


Page 6

You might also like