ELC 111 : Computer Programming I

Basic Concepts of C language

Lecturer: Dr. Reham Samir

 References
 Paul Deitel, Harvey Deitel, “C How to Program with
an introduction to C++ ”, Pearson Education, eighth
edition, 2016.

 Noel Kalicharan, “Learn to Program with C ”, Apress,

2015.
 A simple C program
 Our first program prints a line of text:

 The output from this program will be:

 A simple C program
 Comments

These lines are

called comments

 Comments are inserted to document programs and improve program

readability.
 Comments also help other people read and understand your program.
 Comments do not cause the computer to perform any action when the
program is run (they’re ignored by the C compiler).
 There’s another form of comment that you can use when you need to spread
a comment over several lines (multi-line comment), for example:
/* This comment is
over two lines. */
 A simple C program
 #include Preprocessor Directive

 Lines beginning with # are processed by the preprocessor before

compilation.
 It tells the preprocessor to include the contents of the standard
input/output header (<stdio.h>) in the program.
 This header contains information used by the compiler when
compiling calls to standard input/output library functions such as
printf.
 A simple C program
 The main Function

 The computer knows where to start executing a program by looking

for a function called main then it starts executing the instructions it
finds there.
 C program contains one or more functions, one of which must be
main to tell it where to start executing.
 A simple C program
 The main Function
 In general, any function has four parts: return type, name, parameter
list, and function body.
 A return type: here int (meaning “integer”), which specifies what
kind of result, if any, the function will return to whoever asked for it
to be executed.
 A name: here main.
 A parameter list enclosed in parentheses: in this case, the parameter
list is void which means that main does not receive any information.
 A function body enclosed in a set of “curly braces,” { }: which lists
the actions (called statements) that the function is to perform.
 A simple C program
 An Output Statement

 printf instructs the computer to perform an action, namely to print on

the screen the string of characters marked by the quotation marks.
 The entire line, including the printf function, its argument within the
parentheses and the semicolon (;), is called a statement.
 Every statement must end with a semicolon.
 A simple C program
 Escape Sequences
 The backslash (\) is called an escape character. It indicates that printf
is supposed to do something out of the ordinary.
 When encountering a backslash in a string, the compiler looks ahead
at the next character and combines it with the backslash to form an
escape sequence.
 The escape sequence \n means newline, the newline causes the cursor
to position to the beginning of the next line on the screen.
 The Linker and Executables
 The Linker and Executables
 Standard library functions like printf and scanf are not part of the C
programming language.
 When the linker runs, it locates the library functions and inserts the
proper calls to these library functions in the object program.
 Now the object program is complete and ready to be executed.
 Example: (What is the error in this program)
// A first program in C.
// function main begins program execution
int main( void )
{
printf( "Welcome to C!\n" );
} // end function main
 Sol:
 The compiler complains as we didn’t include something to tell the
compiler what printf was, so the compiler complains. To correct that,
let’s add a header file.
 Example: (What is the error in this program)
// A first program in C.
#include <stio.h>
// function main begins program execution
int main( void )
{
printf( "Welcome to C!\n" );
} // end function main
 Sol:
 The compiler complains as we misspelled stdio.h.
 Example: (What is the error in this program)
// A first program in C.
#include <stdio.h>
// function main begins program execution
int main( void )
{
printf( "Welcome to C!\n );
} // end function main
 Sol:
 The compiler complains as we didn’t terminate the string with a ".
 Example: (What is the error in this program)
// A first program in C.
#include <stdio.h>
// function main begins program execution
integer main( void )
{
printf( "Welcome to C!\n" );
} // end function main
 Sol:
 The compiler complains as the abbreviation int is used in C rather
than the word integer.
 Example: (What is the error in this program)
// A first program in C.
#include <stdio.h>
// function main begins program execution
int main( void )
{
printf( 'Welcome to C!\n' );
} // end function main
 Sol:
 The compiler complains as we used single quotes rather than double
quotes to delimit the string.
 Example: (What is the error in this program)
// A first program in C.
#include <stdio.h>
// function main begins program execution
int main( void )
{
printf( "Welcome to C!\n" )
} // end function main
 Sol:
 The compiler complains as we forgot to terminate the output
statement with a semicolon.
 Many C statements are terminated by a semicolon (;). The compiler
needs those semicolons to know where one statement ends and the
next begins.
 Using printf
 Example: What is the output from the following program?

 Sol:
 Using printf
 Example: What is the output from the following program?

 Sol:
 Using printf
 Example: Write printf statement(s) to print the following:

 Sol:
printf("Where the mind is without fear\n\n");
printf("And the head is held high\n");
or
printf("Where the mind is without fear\n");
printf("\nAnd the head is held high\n");
or
printf("Where the mind is without fear\n");
printf("\n");
printf("And the head is held high\n");
 Using printf
 Example: Write printf statement(s) to print the following:

 Sol:
printf("Use \" to begin and end a string\n");
 Prompting Messages

 This statement displays the literal "Enter first integer" and positions
the cursor to the beginning of the next line.
 This message is called a prompt because it tells the user to take a
specific action.
 Variables
 All variables must be defined with a name and a data type before
they can be used in a program.
 The C standard allows you to place each variable definition
anywhere in main before that variable’s first use in the code.
 For example:

 Here we define two variables; whose names (locations in memory

where values can be stored for use by a program) are integer1 and
integer2.
 These variables are of type int, which means that they’ll hold integer
values.
 Variables
 We can combine the definitions of integer1 and integer2 variables into a
single definition as follows:

 We can assign a value to a variable in its definition—this is known

as initializing the variable.
 For example:

 int sum = integer1 + integer2; // assign total to sum

 int x = 3;
 identifiers
 The C programmer needs to make up names for things such as
variables, function names, and symbolic constants.
 There are a few simple rules to follow in naming an identifier:
 An identifier is a series of characters consisting of letters, digits and
underscores (_) that does not begin with a digit.
 Avoid starting identifiers with the underscore character (_).
 C is case sensitive (uppercase and lowercase letters are different in
C), so a1 and A1 are different identifiers.
 Choosing meaningful identifier names helps make a program self-
documenting.
 The length of an identifier cannot exceed 63 characters.
 you cannot use reserved keywords as identifiers.
 identifiers
 Reserved Words
 The C language uses a number of keywords such as int, char, and
while.
 A keyword has a special meaning in the context of a C program and
can be used for that purpose only.
 All keywords are written in lowercase letters only.
 Thus int is a keyword but Int and INT are not.

 Keywords are reserved, that is, you cannot use them as your
identifiers.
 Examples of invalid Identifiers:
 identifiers
 Examples of valid Identifiers: