Basics of c

By Gaikwad Varsha P.
Asst. Prof. Information Technology Dept.
Govt. College of Engg. Aurangabad

C was originally developed in the 1970s, by Dennis Ritchie at
Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc.
C is a High level , general –purpose structured programming
language. Instructions of C consists of terms that are very
closely same to algebraic expressions, consisting of certain
English keywords such as if, else, for ,do and while
C contains certain additional features that allows it to be used
at a lower level , acting as bridge between machine language
and the high level languages.
This allows C to be used for system programming as well as for
applications programming

C language consist of some characters set, numbers and
some special symbols. The character set of C consist of all the
alphabets of English language. C consist of
Alphabets a to z, A to Z
Numeric 0,1 to 9
Special Symbols {,},[,],?,+,-,*,/,%,!,;,and more
The words formed from the character set are building
blocks of C and are sometimes known as tokens. These
tokens represent the individual entity of language. The
following different types of token are used in C
1) Identifiers 2)Keywords 3)Constants
4) Operators 5)Punctuation Symbols

Identifiers
 A 'C' program consist of two types of elements , user
defined and system defined. Idetifiers is nothing but a
name given to these eleme
 nts.
 An identifier is a word used by a programmer to name a
variable , function, or label.
 identifiers consist of letters and digits, in any order, except
that the first charecter or lable.
 Identifiers consist of letters and digits if any order,except
that the first charecter must be letter.
 Both Upper and lowercase letters can be used

Keywords
 Keywords are nothing but
system defined identifiers.
 Keywords are reserved words
of the language.
 They have specific meaning
in the language and cannot
be used by the programmer
as variable or constant names
 C is case senitive, it means
these must be used as it is
 32 Keywords in C
Programming
auto double int struct
break else long switch
case enum register typedef
char extern return union
const float short unsigned
continue for signed void
default goto sizeof volatile
do if static while

Variables
 A variable is nothing but a name given to a storage area that our programs can
manipulate. Each variable in C has a specific type, which determines the size
and layout of the variable's memory; the range of values that can be stored
within that memory; and the set of operations that can be applied to the
variable.
 The name of a variable can be composed of letters, digits, and the underscore
character. It must begin with either a letter or an underscore. Upper and
lowercase letters are distinct because C is case-sensitive. There are following
basic variable types −
Type Description
 char Typically a single octet(one byte). This is an integer type.
 int The most natural size of integer for the machine.
 float A single-precision floating point value.
 double A double-precision floating point value.
 void Represents the absence of type.

Constants
 A constant is a value or an identifier whose value cannot be
altered in a program. For example: 1, 2.5,
 As mentioned, an identifier also can be defined as a constant. eg.
const double PI = 3.14
 Here, PI is a constant. Basically what it means is that, PI and 3.14
is same for this program.
Integer constants
 A integer constant is a numeric constant (associated with
number) without any fractional or exponential part. There are
three types of integer constants in C programming:
 decimal constant(base 10)
 octal constant(base 8)
 hexadecimal constant(base 16)

Constants
Floating-point constants
 A floating point constant is a numeric constant that has
either a fractional form or an exponent form. For example:
2.0,0.0000234,-0.22E-5
Character constants
 A character constant is a constant which uses single
quotation around characters. For example: 'a', 'l', 'm', 'F'
String constants
 String constants are the constants which are enclosed in a
pair of double-quote marks. For example: "good" ,"x","Earth
is roundn"

Escape Sequences
Sometimes, it is necessary to use characters which cannot be typed or has special
meaning in C programming. For example: newline(enter), tab, question mark
etc. In order to use these characters, escape sequence is used.
 For example: n is used for newline. The backslash ( ) causes "escape" from
the normal way the characters are interpreted by the compiler.Escape
Sequences Character
 b Backspace
 f Form feed
 n Newline
 r Return
 t Horizontal tab
 v Vertical tab
 Backslash
 ' Single quotation mark
 " Double quotation mark
 ? Question mark
 0 Null character

Operators in C:An operator is a symbol which operates on a value or a
variable. For example: + is an operator to perform addition.
C programming has wide range of operators to perform
various operations. For better understanding of operators,
these operators can be classified as:
 Arithmetic Operators
 Increment and Decrement Operators
 Assignment Operators
 Relational Operators
 Logical Operators
 Conditional Operators
 Bitwise Operators
 Special Operators

Arithmetic Operator
 Operator Meaning of Operator
 + addition or unary plus
 - subtraction or unary minus
 * multiplication
 / division
 % remainder after
division( modulo division)

Operators
1. C programming has two operators increment ++
and decrement -- to change the value of an
operand (constant or variable) by 1.
2. Increment ++ increases the value by 1 whereas
decrement -- decreases the value by 1.
3. These two operators are unary operators,
meaning they only operate on a single operand.
eg. int a=10, b=100
++a = 11
--b = 99

C Assignment Operators
 An assignment operator is used for assigning a
value to a variable. The most common assignment
operator is =
 Operator Example Same as
 = a = b a = b
 += a += b a = a+b
 -= a -= b a = a-b
 *= a *= b a = a*b
 /= a /= b a = a/b
 %= a %= b a = a%b

C Relational Operators
 A relational operator checks the relationship between two
operands. If the relation is true, it returns 1; if the relation
is false, it returns value 0.
 Relational operators are used in decision making and
loops.
Operator Meaning of Operator Example
 == Equal to 5 == 3 returns 0
 > Greater than 5 > 3 returns 1
 < Less than 5 < 3 returns 0
 != Not equal to 5 != 3 returns 1
 >= Greater than or equal to 5 >= 3 returns 1
 <= Less than or equal to5 <= 3 return 0

Basics of c

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Basics of c