Department of Computer and Information Science,

School of Science, IUPUI

A First C Program

Dale Roberts, Lecturer

Dale Roberts
 Try Your First C Program
#include <stdio.h> /* I/O header file */ comment
header file – contains I/O routines
pre-processor directive
main() main must be present in each C program
Indicates a {
program
one statement
building printf(“Hello world ”); statement terminator
block called printf(“Welcome to CSCI230\n“);
function
printf(“I am John Smith\n”);
}
A C program contains one or more functions
main() is the function name of your main (root) program
{ }: braces (left & right) to construct a block containing the statements of a
function
Every statement must end with a ;
\ is called an escape character
\n is an example of an escape sequence which indicates newline
Other escape sequences are: \t \r \a \\ \”
Exercise: Use any editor to type and then save your first program as main.c
% gcc main.c
% [Link] and observe its result.
Dale Roberts
 Identifiers
Variable identifiers
Begin with a letter or underscore: A-Z, a-z, _
The rest of the name can be letters, underscore, or digits
Guarantee that east least the first 8 characters are significant (those
come after the 8th character will be ignored) while most of C compiler
allows 32 significant characters.
Example:
_abc ABC Time time _a1 abcdefgh
abcdefghi (may be the same as abcdefgh)
Case sensitive
Keywords: reserved names (lexical tokens)
auto double if static break else int struct
case entry long switch char extern register
typedef float return union do go sizeof continue
…

Dale Roberts
 Fundamental Data Type
Four Data Types (assume 2’s complement, byte machine)
Data Type Abbreviation Size Range
(byte)
char char 1 -128 ~ 127
unsigned char 1 0 ~ 255
int 2 or 4 -215 ~ 215-1 or -231 ~ 231-1
unsigned int unsigned 2 or 4 0 ~ 65535 or 0 ~ 232-1
int short int short 2 -32768 ~ 32767
unsigned short int unsigned short 2 0 ~ 65535
long int long 4 -231 ~ 231-1
unsigned long int unsigned long 4 0 ~ 232-1
float 4
double 8
Note: 27 = 128, 215 =32768, 231 = 2147483648
Complex and double complex are not available

Dale Roberts
 Variable Declarations

type v1,v2,v3, …, vn
Example:
int i;
int j;
float k;
char c;
short int x;
long int y;
unsigned int z;
int a1, a2, a3, a4, a5;

Dale Roberts
 Numeric, Char, String Literals
Literal
Numeric literal
fixed-point
octal O32 (= 24D) (covered later)
hexadecimal OxFE or Oxfe (=254D) (covered later)
decimal int 32
long (explicit) 32L or 32l
an ordinary integer literal that is too long to fit in an int is also too
long for long
floating-point
No single precision is used; always use double for literal
Example:
1.23
123.456e-7
0.12E

Dale Roberts
 Numeric, Char, String Literals
• Character literal (covered later)
• American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
• Printable: single space 32
‘0’ - ‘9’ 48 - 57
‘A’ - ‘Z’ 65 - 90
‘a’ - ‘z’ 97 - 122
• Nonprintable and special meaning chars
‘\n’ new line 10 ‘\t’ tab 9
‘\\’ back slash 9 ‘\’’ single quote 39
‘\0’ null 0 ‘\b’ back space 8
‘\f’ formfeed 12 ’\r’ carriage return 13
‘\”’ double quote 34

‘\ddd’ arbitrary bit pattern using 1-3 octal digits

Dale Roberts
 Numeric, Char, String Literals
String Literal
will be covered in Array section
String is a array of chars but ended by ‘\0’
String literal is allocated in a continuous memory space of
Data Segment, so it can not be rewritten
Example: “ABCD”
A B C D ‘\0’ ...
4 chars but takes 5 byte spaces in memory

Question: “I am a string” takes ? Bytes

Ans: 13+1 = 14 bytes

Dale Roberts
 Numeric, Char, String Literals
• Character literals & ASCII codes:
char x;
x=‘a’; /* x = 97*/
Notes:
– ‘a’ and “a” are different; why?
‘a’ is the literal 97
“a” is an array of character literals, { ‘a’, ‘\0’} or {97, 0}
– “a” + “b” +”c” is invalid but ‘a’+’b’+’c’ = ? (hint: ‘a’ = 97 in ASCII)
‘a’ + ‘b’ + ‘c’ = 97 + 98 + 99 = 294 = 256 + 38

in the memory

1 38
– if the code used is not ASCII code, one should check out each
value of character

Dale Roberts
 Initialization
If a variable is not initialized, the value of
variable may be either 0 or garbage depending
on the storage class of the variable.
int i=5;
float x=1.23;
char c=‘A’;
int i=1, j,k=5;
char c1 = ‘A’, c2 = 97;
float x=1.23, y=0.1;

Dale Roberts
 Memory Concepts
Each variable has a name, address, type, and
value
1) int x;
2) scanf(“%d”, &x);

3) user inputs 10
4) x = 200;
After the execution of (1) x
After the execution of (2) x
After the execution of (3) x 10

After the execution of (4) x 200

Previous value of x was overwritten

Dale Roberts
 Sample Problem
Write a program to take two numbers as input data and
print their sum, their difference, their product and their
quotient.
Problem Inputs
float x, y; /* two items */
problem Output
float sum; /* sum of x and y */
float difference; /* difference of x and y */
float product; /* product of x and y */
float quotient; /* quotient of x divided by y */

Dale Roberts
 Sample Problem (cont.)
Pseudo Code:
Declare variables of x and y;
Prompt user to input the value of x and y;
Print the sum of x and y;
Print the difference of x and y;
Print the product of x and y;
If y not equal to zero, print the quotient of x divided by y

Dale Roberts
 Example Program
#include <stdio.h> function
int main(void) • name
{ • list of argument along with their types
float x,y; • return value and its type
• Body
float sum;
printf(“Enter the value of x:”);
scanf(“%f”, &x);
printf(“\nEnter the value of y:”);
scanf(“%f”, &y);
sum = x + y;
printf(“\nthe sum of x and y is:%f”,sum);
printf(“\nthe sum of x and y is:%f”,x+y);
printf(“\nthe difference of x and y is:%f”,x-y);
printf(“\nthe product of x and y is:%f”,x*y);
if (y != 0)
printf(“\nthe quotient of x divided by y is:%f”,x/y); inequality operator
else
printf(“\nquotient of x divided by y does not exist!\n”);
return(0);
}

Dale Roberts