151.  C Programming

Rev. 1.0

 

This course provides students with a comprehensive study of the C programming language. Classroom lectures stress the strengths of C, which provide programmers with the means of writing efficient, maintainable, and portable code. The lectures are supplemented with non-trivial lab exercises.

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

 

·         Gain a working knowledge of C programming

·         Learn how to write modular, efficient and readable C programs

·         Utilize pointers to efficiently solve problems

·         Use functions from the portable C library.

 

Course Duration:  5 days

 

Prerequisites:  Experience with a programming language or an assembly language

 

1.      Getting Started

Background

Sample program

Components of a C program

Data types

Naming conventions for variables

Printing and initializing variables

Defining arrays

 

2.      Functions and Operators

Functions

Invoking functions

Elementary operators

The operator= operators

The conditional operator

Increment and decrement operators

 

3.      Control Flow Constructs

if statement

if else statement

while loop

for loop

Endless loops

do while loop

break and continue statements

switch statement

else if

 

4.      The C Preprocessor

#define

Writing macros

#include

#ifdef

#ifndef

 

5.      Simple I/O

Character i/o

Handling end of file

Simple i/o examples

Redirecting standard I/O

i/o with character arrays

 

6.      More On Functions

Function declarations

Returning a value or not

Function prototypes

Arguments and parameters

Organization of C source files

An extended example

Main function

The gets function

The strcmp function

The check function

The atoi function

The average function

 

7.      Bit Manipulation

Defining the problem space

Readability aids

Bit wise operators

Bit wise functions

Circular shifts

 

8.      Strings

Fundamental concepts

Aggregate operations

String functions

 

9.      Higher Dimensional Arrays

Array dimensions

An array as an argument to a function

Arrays of strings

 

10. Separate Compilation

Compiling over several files

Function scope

File scope

Program scope

Local static

resister and extern

Object files

Libraries

The C loader

Header files

 

11. Pointers (Part I)

Fundamental concepts

Pointer operators and operations

Changing an argument with a function call

Pointer arithmetic

Traversing arrays with a pointer

Traversing strings with a pointer

String functions with pointers

Relationship between array and pointer

The pointer notation *p++

 

12. Pointers (Part II)

Dynamic storage allocation - malloc

Functions returning a pointer

Initialization of pointers

gets - A Function returning a pointer

An array of character pointers

Pointer to pointer

Command line arguments (CLA) - rationale

CLA: Pointer expressions

The environment pointer

Accessing characters on the command line

Practice with pointers

Changing a pointer through a function call

Pointer to a function

Uses of pointers to functions

 

13. Structures

Fundamental concepts

Describing a structure

Creating structures

Operations on structures

Functions returning structures

Passing structures to functions

Pointers to structures

Making sense of the p -> member notation

Structures vs structure pointers

Array of structures

Functions returning pointer to structure

 

14. Structure Related Items

typedef - New name for an existing type

typedef with structures

Header files for structure applications

Bit fields

Unions

Non-homogeneous arrays

Enumeration types

 

15. File I/O

System calls vs library calls

Opening disk files

Access modes

Errors in opening files

i/o library calls

Example: copying a file

Character input vs line input

Motivation for the scanf function

scanf and variants

printf variants

Closing files fclose

Servicing errors – errno

 

16. Information About Files

The stat function

File existence

Telling time - time

ctime

localtime

 

17. Binary I/O With Structures

A data base application

the main function

the menu function

create_db function - fwrite

print_db function - fread

fseek

retrieve_db function

fflush and ftell

 

18. Useful Library Functions

strstr - Is one string a substring

strchr, strrchr - Is a char in a string

system - Execute a command line command

strtok - Tokenize a string

strspn, strcspn - Verify string content

Math functions

Character testing functions

 

Appendix. Reference Tables

 

Important header files

printf formats

C reserved words

Conversion

Precedence charts

 

System Requirements

 

The course is designed to be delivered in any environment supporting a C compiler.