C Programming Input Output (I/O)

ANSI (American National Standards Institute) standard has defined many library functions for
input and output in C language. Functions printf () and scan() are the most commonly used to
display out and take input respectively. Let us consider an example:

#include <stdio.h> //This is needed to run printf() function.

int main()
{
printf("C Programming"); //displays the content inside quotation
return 0;
}

Output

C Programming

Explanation of how this program works

1. Every program starts from main() function.

2. printf() is a library function to display output which only works if #include<stdio.h>is
included at the beginning.
3. Here, stdio.h is a header file (standard input output header file) and #include is command
to paste the code from the header file when necessary. When compiler encounters printf()
function and doesn't find stdio.h header file, compiler shows error.
4. Code return 0; indicates the end of program. You can ignore this statement but, it is good
programming practice to use return 0;.

I/O of integers in C

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int c=5;
printf("Number=%d",c);
return 0;
}

Output

Number=5
Inside quotation of printf() there, is a conversion format string "%d" (for integer). If this
conversion format string matches with remaining argument, i.e., c in this case, value of c is
displayed.

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
int c;
printf("Enter a number\n");
scanf("%d",&c);
printf("Number=%d",c);
return 0;
}

Output

Enter a number
4
Number=4

The scanf() function is used to take input from user. In this program, the user is asked a input
and value is stored in variable c. Note the '&' sign before c. &c denotes the address of c and
value is stored in that address.

I/O of floats in C

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
float a;
printf("Enter value: ");
scanf("%f",&a);
printf("Value=%f",a); //%f is used for floats instead of %d
return 0;
}

Output

Enter value: 23.45

Value=23.450000

Conversion format string "%f" is used for floats to take input and to display floating value of a
variable.

I/O of characters and ASCII code

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
char var1;
printf("Enter character: ");
scanf("%c",&var1);
printf("You entered %c.",var1);
return 0;
}

Output

Enter character: g
You entered g.

Conversion format string "%c" is used in case of characters.

ASCII code

When character is typed in the above program, the character itself is not recorded a numeric
value(ASCII value) is stored. And when we displayed that value by using "%c", that character is
displayed.

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
char var1;
printf("Enter character: ");
scanf("%c",&var1);
printf("You entered %c.\n",var1);
/* \n prints the next line(performs work of enter). */
printf("ASCII value of %d",var1);
return 0;
}

Output

Enter character:
g
103

When, 'g' is entered, ASCII value 103 is stored instead of g.

You can display character if you know ASCII code only. This is shown by following example.

#include <stdio.h>
int main(){
int var1=69;
 printf("Character of ASCII value 69: %c",var1);
return 0;
}

Output

Character of ASCII value 69: E

The ASCII value of 'A' is 65, 'B' is 66 and so on to 'Z' is 90. Similarly ASCII value of 'a' is 97, 'b'
is 98 and so on to 'z' is 122.

C - Arrays
C programming language provides a data structure called the array, which can store a fixed-size
sequential collection of elements of the same type. An array is used to store a collection of data,
but it is often more useful to think of an array as a collection of variables of the same type.

Instead of declaring individual variables, such as number0, number1, ..., and number99, you
declare one array variable such as numbers and use numbers[0], numbers[1], and ...,
numbers[99] to represent individual variables. A specific element in an array is accessed by an
index.

All arrays consist of contiguous memory locations. The lowest address corresponds to the first
element and the highest address to the last element.

Declaring Arrays
To declare an array in C, a programmer specifies the type of the elements and the number of
elements required by an array as follows:

type arrayName [ arraySize ];

This is called a single-dimensional array. The arraySize must be an integer constant greater than
zero and type can be any valid C data type. For example, to declare a 10-element array called
balance of type double, use this statement:

double balance[10];
Now balance is avariable array which is sufficient to hold upto 10 double numbers.

Initializing Arrays
You can initialize array in C either one by one or using a single statement as follows:

double balance[5] = {1000.0, 2.0, 3.4, 17.0, 50.0};

The number of values between braces { } can not be larger than the number of elements that we
declare for the array between square brackets [ ].

If you omit the size of the array, an array just big enough to hold the initialization is created.
Therefore, if you write:

double balance[] = {1000.0, 2.0, 3.4, 17.0, 50.0};

You will create exactly the same array as you did in the previous example. Following is an
example to assign a single element of the array:

balance[4] = 50.0;

The above statement assigns element number 5th in the array with a value of 50.0. All arrays
have 0 as the index of their first element which is also called base index and last index of an
array will be total size of the array minus 1. Following is the pictorial representation of the same
array we discussed above:

Accessing Array Elements

An element is accessed by indexing the array name. This is done by placing the index of the
element within square brackets after the name of the array. For example:

double salary = balance[9];

The above statement will take 10th element from the array and assign the value to salary
variable. Following is an example which will use all the above mentioned three concepts viz.
declaration, assignment and accessing arrays:

#include <stdio.h>

int main ()
{
int n[ 10 ]; /* n is an array of 10 integers */
 int i,j;

/* initialize elements of array n to 0 */

for ( i = 0; i < 10; i++ )
{
n[ i ] = i + 100; /* set element at location i to i + 100 */
}

/* output each array element's value */

for (j = 0; j < 10; j++ )
{
printf("Element[%d] = %d\n", j, n[j] );
}

return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

Element[0] = 100
Element[1] = 101
Element[2] = 102
Element[3] = 103
Element[4] = 104
Element[5] = 105
Element[6] = 106
Element[7] = 107
Element[8] = 108
Element[9] = 109

C Arrays in Detail
Arrays are important to C and should need lots of more details. The following are few important
concepts related to array which should be clear to a C programmer:

Concept Description
C supports multidimensional arrays. The simplest form of the
Multi-dimensional arrays
multidimensional array is the two-dimensional array.
You can pass to the function a pointer to an array by specifying the
Passing arrays to functions
array's name without an index.
Return array from a function C allows a function to return an array.
You can generate a pointer to the first element of an array by
Pointer to an array
simply specifying the array name, without any index.

Multi-dimensional Arrays in C
C programming language allows multidimensional arrays. Here is the general form of a
multidimensional array declaration:

type name[size1][size2]...[sizeN];

For example, the following declaration creates a three dimensional 5 . 10 . 4 integer array:

int threedim[5][10][4];

Two-Dimensional Arrays:
The simplest form of the multidimensional array is the two-dimensional array. A two-
dimensional array is, in essence, a list of one-dimensional arrays. To declare a two-dimensional
integer array of size x,y you would write something as follows:

type arrayName [ x ][ y ];

Where type can be any valid C data type and arrayName will be a valid C identifier. A two-
dimensional array can also be thought of as a table which will have x number of rows and y
number of columns. A 2-dimensional array a, which contains three rows and four columns can
be shown as below:

Thus, every element in array a is identified by an element name of the form a[ i ][ j ], where a is
the name of the array, and i and j are the subscripts that uniquely identify each element in a.

Initializing Two-Dimensional Arrays:

Multidimensional arrays may be initialized by specifying bracketed values for each row.
Following is an array with 3 rows and each row has 4 columns.

int a[3][4] = {
{0, 1, 2, 3} , /* initializers for row indexed by 0 */
{4, 5, 6, 7} , /* initializers for row indexed by 1 */
{8, 9, 10, 11} /* initializers for row indexed by 2 */
};

The nested braces, which indicate the intended row, are optional. The following initialization is
equivalent to previous example:
int a[3][4] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11};

Accessing Two-Dimensional Array Elements:

An element in 2-dimensional array is accessed by using the subscripts, i.e., row index and
column index of the array. For example:

int val = a[2][3];

The above statement will take 4th element from the 3rd row of the array. You can verify it in the
above diagram. Let us check the below program where we have used nested loop to handle a two
dimensional array:

#include <stdio.h>

int main ()
{
/* an array with 5 rows and 2 columns*/
int a[5][2] = { {0,0}, {1,2}, {2,4}, {3,6},{4,8}};
int i, j;

/* output each array element's value */

for (i = 0; i < 5; i++ )
{
for (j = 0; j < 2; j++)
{
printf("a[%d][%d] = %d\n", i,j, a[i][j] );
}
}
return 0;
}

When the above code is compiled and executed, it produces the following result:

a[0][0]: 0
a[0][1]: 0
a[1][0]: 1
a[1][1]: 2
a[2][0]: 2
a[2][1]: 4
a[3][0]: 3
a[3][1]: 6
a[4][0]: 4
a[4][1]: 8

As explained above, you can have arrays with any number of dimensions, although it is likely
that most of the arrays you create will be of one or two dimensions.