Introduction to C

Objectives
After this Session, you will be able to
identify C tokens
know C key words and identifiers
write constants and variables of C
language

Introduction
The C programming language was
designed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell
Laboratories in the early 1970s
Influenced by
ALGOL 60 (1960),
CPL (Cambridge, 1963),
BCPL (Martin Richard, 1967),
B (Ken Thompson, 1970)

Standard C
Standardized in 1989 by ANSI
(American
National
Standards
Institute) known as ANSI C
International standard (ISO) in 1990
which was adopted by ANSI and is
known as C89
As part of the normal evolution
process the standard was updated in
1995 (C95) and 1999 (C99)

Elements of a C Program
A C development environment includes
System libraries and headers: a set of
standard libraries and their header files.
Application Source: application source and
header files
Compiler: converts source to object code
for a specific platform
Linker: resolves external references and
produces the executable module

Elements of a C Program
User program structure
there must be one main function where
execution begins when the program is run. This
function is called main
int main (void) { ... },
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{ ... }

additional local and external functions and

variables

Header files
The files that are specified in the
include section are called as header
files
These are precompiled files that have
some functions defined in them
We can call those functions in our
program by supplying parameters
Header file is given an extension .h
C Source file is given an extension .c

Main function
This is the entry point of a program
When a file is executed, the start
point is the main function
From main function the flow goes as
per the programmers choice.
There may or may not be other
functions written by user in a
program
Main function is compulsory for any c
program

Writing the first program

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf(Hello);
return 0;
}
This program prints Hello on the screen
when we execute it

Running a C Program
Type a program
Save it
Compile the program This will generate
an exe file (executable)
Run the program (Actually the exe created
out of compilation will run and not the .c
file)

CHARACTER SET
C characters are grouped into the
following categories.
1.
2.
3.
4.

Letters
Digits
Special Characters
White Spaces

Letters & Digits

Letters
Uppercase A.Z
Lowercase a..z
Digits
All decimal digits 0..9

Special characters
, Comma
. Period
; Semicolon
: Colon
? Question mark
Apostrophe
Quotation mark
! Exclamation
| Vertical Bar
/ Slash
\ Back slash
~ Tilde
_ Underscore
$ Dollar sign
% Percent sign

& Ampersand
^ Caret
* Asterisk
- Minus
+ Plus sign
< Less than
> Greater than
( Left parenthesis
) Right parentheses
[Left bracket
] Right bracket
{ Left brace
} Right brace
# Number sign

C TOKENS
In C programs, the smallest individual units are known as tokens.

KEYWORDS AND IDENTIFIERS

Every C word is classified as either a keyword
or an identifier.
All keywords have fixed meanings and these
meanings cannot be changed.
Eg: auto, break, char, void etc.,
Identifiers refer to the names of variables,
functions and arrays. They are user-defined
names and consist of a sequence of letters
and digits, with a letter as a first character.
Both uppercase and lowercase letters are
permitted. The underscore character is also
permitted in identifiers.

Comments in C
Single line comment
// (double slash)
Termination of comment is by pressing
enter key

Multi line comment

/*.
.*/
This can span over to multiple lines

Structure of C program
/* This is
a comment */
// This is a one-line comment
# include <stdio.h> /* includes header files
*/
main() /* Must have a main function. First
function executed */
{
printf ("Hello World!"); /* stdio functions */
}

Variables
Variables are data that will keep on
changing
Declaration
<<Data type>> <<variable name>>;
int a;

Definition
<<varname>>=<<value>>;
a=10;

Usage
a=a+1; //increments the value of a by 1

Variable names- Rules

Should not be a reserved word like
int etc..
Should start with a letter or an
underscore(_)
Can contain letters, numbers or
underscore.
No other special characters are
allowed including space
Variable names are case sensitive
A and a are different.

CONSTANTS
Constants in C refer to fixed values
that do not change during the
execution of a program.

CONSTANTS
Integer Constants
An integer constant refers to a sequence of digits, There are
three types integers, namely, decimal, octal, and hexa
decimal.

Decimal Constant
Eg:123,-321 etc.,
Note: Embedded spaces, commas and non-digit characters are
not permitted between digits.
Eg: 1) 15 750 2)$1000

Octal Constant
An octal integer constant consists of any combination of digits
from the set 0 through 7, with a leading 0.
Eg: 1) 037 2) 0435

Hexadecimal Constant
A sequence of digits preceded by 0x or 0X is considered as
hexadecimal integer. They may also include alphabets A
through F or a through f.Eg: 1) 0X2 2) 0x9F 3) 0Xbcd

Real Constants
Certain quantities that vary continuously,
such as distances, heights etc., are
represented
by
numbers
containing
functional parts like 17.548.Such numbers
are called real (or floating point)constants.
Eg:0.0083,-0.75 etc.,
A real number may also be expressed in
exponential or scientific notation.
Eg:215.65 may be written as 2.1565e2

Single Character Constants

A single character constants contains a
single character enclosed within a pair of
single quote marks.
Eg: 5 , X , ;
String Constants
A string constant is a sequence of
characters enclosed in double quotes.
The
characters
may
be
letters,
numbers, special characters and blank
space.
Eg:Hello!, 1987, ?.!

Backslash Character Constants

C
supports
special
backslash
character constants that are used in
output functions.
These character combinations are
known as escape sequences.

Backslash Character Constants

Check Your Understanding

1) Write a few numeric constants and
character constants.
2) Write a few meaningful variable names
you think .
3) Describe the character set of C language
4) What do you understand by C tokens?
5) Differentiate Keywords and Identifiers
6) Describe the constants of C language
with examples

Summary
In this lesson we learnt
described character set
learnt the C tokens
studied
about
constants
variables of C

and