C programming Concepts

C programming 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 is the most widely used computer language. 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.

Why to Learn C Programming?

C programming language is a MUST for students and working professionals to become a great Software Engineer specially when they are working in Software Development Domain. I will list down some of the key advantages of learning C Programming:

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

Hello World using C Programming.

Just to give you a little excitement about C programming, I'm going to give you a small conventional C Programming Hello World program, You can try it using Demo link.

Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
   /* my first program in C */
   printf("Hello, World! \n");
   
   return 0;
}

Applications of C Programming

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 are -

Operating Systems
Language Compilers
Assemblers
Text Editors
Print Spoolers
Network Drivers
Modern Programs
Databases
Language Interpreters
Utilities

Audience

This tutorial is designed for software programmers with a need to understand the C programming language starting from scratch. This C tutorial will give you enough understanding on C programming language from where you can take yourself to higher level of expertise.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of Computer Programming terminologies. A basic understanding of any of the programming languages will help you in understanding the C programming concepts and move fast on the learning track.

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" −

Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
   /* my first program in C */
   printf("Hello, World! \n");
   
   return 0;
}

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

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.
The next line int main() is the main function where the program execution begins.
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.
The next line printf(...) is another function available in C which causes the message "Hello, World!" to be displayed on the screen.
The next line return 0; terminates the main() function and returns the value 0.

Compile and Execute C Program

Let us see how to save the source code in a file, and how to compile and run it. Following are the simple steps −

Open a text editor and add the above-mentioned code.
Save the file as hello.c
Open a command prompt and go to the directory where you have saved the file.
Type gcc hello.c and press enter to compile your code.
If there are no errors in your code, the command prompt will take you to the next line and would generate a.out executable file.
Now, type a.out to execute your program.
You will see the output "Hello World" printed on the screen.

$ gcc hello.c
$ ./a.out
Hello, World!

Make sure the gcc compiler is in your path and that you are running it in the directory containing the source file hello.c.

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"
)
;

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;

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 */

You cannot have comments within comments and they do not occur within a string or character literals.

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 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.

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 −

Sr.No.	Types & Description
1	Basic Types They are arithmetic types and are further classified into: (a) integer types and (b) floating-point types.
2	Enumerated types They are again arithmetic types and they are used to define variables that can only assign certain discrete integer values throughout the program.
3	The type void The type specifier void indicates that no value is available.
4	Derived types They include (a) Pointer types, (b) Array types, (c) Structure types, (d) Union types and (e) Function types.

The array types and structure types are referred collectively as the aggregate types. The type of a function specifies the type of the function's return value. We will see the basic types in the following section, where as other types will be covered in the upcoming chapters.

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	1 byte	-128 to 127 or 0 to 255
unsigned char	1 byte	0 to 255
signed char	1 byte	-128 to 127
int	2 or 4 bytes	-32,768 to 32,767 or -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
unsigned int	2 or 4 bytes	0 to 65,535 or 0 to 4,294,967,295
short	2 bytes	-32,768 to 32,767
unsigned short	2 bytes	0 to 65,535
long	8 bytes	-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807
unsigned long	8 bytes	0 to 18446744073709551615

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. Given below is an example to get the size of various type on a machine using different constant defined in limits.h header file −

Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <limits.h>
#include <float.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

    printf("CHAR_BIT    :   %d\n", CHAR_BIT);
    printf("CHAR_MAX    :   %d\n", CHAR_MAX);
    printf("CHAR_MIN    :   %d\n", CHAR_MIN);
    printf("INT_MAX     :   %d\n", INT_MAX);
    printf("INT_MIN     :   %d\n", INT_MIN);
    printf("LONG_MAX    :   %ld\n", (long) LONG_MAX);
    printf("LONG_MIN    :   %ld\n", (long) LONG_MIN);
    printf("SCHAR_MAX   :   %d\n", SCHAR_MAX);
    printf("SCHAR_MIN   :   %d\n", SCHAR_MIN);
    printf("SHRT_MAX    :   %d\n", SHRT_MAX);
    printf("SHRT_MIN    :   %d\n", SHRT_MIN);
    printf("UCHAR_MAX   :   %d\n", UCHAR_MAX);
    printf("UINT_MAX    :   %u\n", (unsigned int) UINT_MAX);
    printf("ULONG_MAX   :   %lu\n", (unsigned long) ULONG_MAX);
    printf("USHRT_MAX   :   %d\n", (unsigned short) USHRT_MAX);

    return 0;
}

When you compile and execute the above program, it produces the following result on Linux −

CHAR_BIT    :   8
CHAR_MAX    :   127
CHAR_MIN    :   -128
INT_MAX     :   2147483647
INT_MIN     :   -2147483648
LONG_MAX    :   9223372036854775807
LONG_MIN    :   -9223372036854775808
SCHAR_MAX   :   127
SCHAR_MIN   :   -128
SHRT_MAX    :   32767
SHRT_MIN    :   -32768
UCHAR_MAX   :   255
UINT_MAX    :   4294967295
ULONG_MAX   :   18446744073709551615
USHRT_MAX   :   65535

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	4 byte	1.2E-38 to 3.4E+38	6 decimal places
double	8 byte	2.3E-308 to 1.7E+308	15 decimal places
long double	10 byte	3.4E-4932 to 1.1E+4932	19 decimal places

The header file float.h defines macros that allow you to use these values and other details about the binary representation of real numbers in your programs. The following example prints the storage space taken by a float type and its range values −

Live Demo

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <limits.h>
#include <float.h>

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

    printf("Storage size for float : %d \n", sizeof(float));
    printf("FLT_MAX     :   %g\n", (float) FLT_MAX);
    printf("FLT_MIN     :   %g\n", (float) FLT_MIN);
    printf("-FLT_MAX    :   %g\n", (float) -FLT_MAX);
    printf("-FLT_MIN    :   %g\n", (float) -FLT_MIN);
    printf("DBL_MAX     :   %g\n", (double) DBL_MAX);
    printf("DBL_MIN     :   %g\n", (double) DBL_MIN);
    printf("-DBL_MAX     :  %g\n", (double) -DBL_MAX);
    printf("Precision value: %d\n", FLT_DIG );

    return 0;
}

When you compile and execute the above program, it produces the following result on Linux −

Storage size for float : 4 
FLT_MAX      :   3.40282e+38
FLT_MIN      :   1.17549e-38
-FLT_MAX     :   -3.40282e+38
-FLT_MIN     :   -1.17549e-38
DBL_MAX      :   1.79769e+308
DBL_MIN      :   2.22507e-308
-DBL_MAX     :  -1.79769e+308
Precision value: 6

The void Type

The void type specifies that no value is available. It is used in three kinds of situations −

Sr.No.	Types & Description
1	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);
2	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);
3	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 can be casted to any data type.

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