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C - Program Structure
Before we study basic building blocks of the C programming language, let us look at a
minimum C program structure so that we can take it as a reference in upcoming lectures.

Hello World Example

A C program basically consists of the following parts:

 Preprocessor Commands

 Functions

 Variables

 Statements & Expressions

 Comments

Let us look at a simple code that would print the words "Hello World":

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h> 1

main()
{
/* my first program in C */

printf("Hello, World! \n");

getch();
}

Let us look various parts of the above program:

1. The first line of the program #include <stdio.h> is a preprocessor command, which tells a
C compiler to include stdio.h file before going to actual compilation.

2. The second line of the program #include <conio.h> is a preprocessor command, which
tells a C compiler to include conio.h file before going to actual compilation.

3. The next line main() is the main function where program execution begins.
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4. The next line /*...*/ will be ignored by the compiler and it has been put to add additional
comments in the program. So such lines are called comments in the program.

5. The next line printf(...) is another function available in C which causes the message
"Hello, World!" to be displayed on the screen.

6. The next line getch(); causes the output to stay on the screen.

Compile & Execute C Program:

Let’s look at how to save the source code in a file, and how to compile and run it. Following
are the simple steps:

1. Open a text editor and add the above-mentioned code.

2. Save the file as hello.c

3. Click on Compile Command in the menu bar of turbo C editor. This will compile the
program and shows the errors if any otherwise it will show the success message.

4. The compiler may show warning messages. Please ignore them at the moment. We will
discuss them later.

5. Click on the Run Command in the menu bar of Turbo C editor. This will display your
output.

6. You will be able to see "Hello World" printed on the screen

Hello, World!

Basic Syntax
You have seen a basic structure of C program, so it will be easy to understand other basic
building blocks of the C programming language.

Tokens in C
A C program consists of various tokens and a token is either a keyword, an identifier, a
constant, a string literal, or a symbol. For example, the following C statement consists of five
tokens:
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printf("Hello, World! \n");

The individual tokens are:

printf
(
"Hello, World! \n"
)
;

Semicolons ;
In C program, the semicolon is a statement terminator. That is, each individual statement
must be ended with a semicolon. It indicates the end of one logical entity.

For example, following are two different statements:

printf("Hello, World! \n"); getch();

Comments
Comments are like helping text in your C program and they are ignored by the compiler.
They start with /* and terminates with the characters */ as shown below:

/* my first program in C */

You cannot have comments within comments and they do not occur within a string or
character literals.

Identifiers
A C identifier is a name used to identify a variable, function, or any other user-defined item.
An identifier starts with a letter A to Z or a to z or an underscore _ followed by zero or more
letters, underscores, and digits (0 to 9).

C does not allow punctuation characters such as @, $, and % within identifiers. C is a case
sensitive programming language. Thus, Manpower and manpower are two different
identifiers in C. Here are some examples of acceptable identifiers:

mohd zara abc move_name a_123

myname50 _temp j a23b9 retVal
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Keywords
The following list shows the reserved words in C. These reserved words may not be used as
constant or variable or any other identifier names.

auto else long switch

break enum register typedef

case extern return union

char float short unsigned

const for signed void

continue goto sizeof volatile

default if static while

do int struct _Packed

double

Whitespace in C
A line containing only whitespace, possibly with a comment, is known as a blank line, and a
C compiler totally ignores it.

Whitespace is the term used in C to describe blanks, tabs, newline characters and comments.
Whitespace separates one part of a statement from another and enables the compiler to
identify where one element in a statement, such as int, ends and the next element begins.
Therefore, in the following statement:

int age;

There must be at least one whitespace character (usually a space) between int and age for the
compiler to be able to distinguish them. On the other hand, in the following statement:

fruit = apples + oranges; // get the total fruit

No whitespace characters are necessary between fruit and =, or between = and apples,
although you are free to include some if you wish for readability purpose.
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Data Types
In the C programming language, data types refer to an extensive system used for declaring
variables or functions of different types. The type of a variable determines how much space it
occupies in storage and how the bit pattern stored is interpreted.

The types in C can be classified as follows:

S.N. Types and Description

Basic Types:
1 They are arithmetic types and consists of the two types: (a) integer types and (b)
floating-point types.

Enumerated types:
2 They are again arithmetic types and they are used to define variables that can only be
assigned certain discrete integer values throughout the program.

The type void:

3
The type specifier void indicates that no value is available.

Derived types:
4 They include (a) Pointer types, (b) Array types, (c) Structure types, (d) Union types
and (e) Function types.

The array types and structure types are referred to collectively as the aggregate types. The
type of a function specifies the type of the function's return value. We will see basic types in
the following section, whereas, other types will be covered in the upcoming chapters.

Integer Types
Following table gives you details about standard integer types with its storage sizes and value
ranges:

Type Storage size Value range

char 1 byte -128 to 127 or 0 to 255

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unsigned char 1 byte 0 to 255

signed char 1 byte -128 to 127

int 2 or 4 bytes -32,768 to 32,767 or -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647

unsigned int 2 or 4 bytes 0 to 65,535 or 0 to 4,294,967,295

short 2 bytes -32,768 to 32,767

unsigned short 2 bytes 0 to 65,535

long 4 bytes -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647

unsigned long 4 bytes 0 to 4,294,967,295

To get the exact size of a type or a variable on a particular platform, you can use
the sizeof operator. The expressions sizeof(type) yields the storage size of the object or type
in bytes.

Floating-Point Types
Following table gives you details about standard floating-point types with storage sizes and
value ranges and their precision:

Type Storage size Value range Precision

float 4 byte 1.2E-38 to 3.4E+38 6 decimal places

double 8 byte 2.3E-308 to 1.7E+308 15 decimal places

long double 10 byte 3.4E-4932 to 1.1E+4932 19 decimal places

The header file float.h defines macros that allow you to use these values and other details
about the binary representation of real numbers in your programs.
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The void Type

The void type specifies that no value is available. It is used in three kinds of situations:

S.N. Types and Description

Function returns as void

There are various functions in C which do not return value or you can say they return
1
void. A function with no return value has the return type as void. For example void
exit (int status);

Function arguments as void

2 There are various functions in C which do not accept any parameter. A function with
no parameter can accept as a void. For example, int rand(void);

Pointers to void
A pointer of type void * represents the address of an object, but not its type. For
3
example a memory allocation function void *malloc( size_t size ); returns a pointer to
void which can be casted to any data type.

The void type may not be understood to you at this point, so let us proceed and we will cover
these concepts in the upcoming chapters.

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. Based on the basic types explained in previous chapter, there will
be the following basic variable types:

Type Description

char Typically a single octet(one byte). This is an integer type.

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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.

C programming language also allows to define various other types of variables, which we
will cover in subsequent chapters like Enumeration, Pointer, Array, Structure, Union, etc. For
this chapter, let us study only basic variable types.

Variable Definition in C:
A variable definition means to tell the compiler where and how much to create the storage for
the variable. A variable definition specifies a data type and contains a list of one or more
variables of that type as follows:

type variable_list;

Here, type must be a valid C data type including char, w_char, int, float, double, bool or any
user-defined object, etc., and variable_list may consist of one or more identifier names
separated by commas. Some valid declarations are shown here:

int i, j, k;
char c, ch;
float f, salary;
double d;

The line int i, j, k; both declares and defines the variables i, j and k; which instructs the
compiler to create variables named i, j and k of type int.
Variables can be initialized (assigned an initial value) in their declaration. The initializer
consists of an equal sign followed by a constant expression as follows:

type variable_name = value;

Some examples are:

int d = 3, f = 5; // declaration of d and f.

int d = 3, f = 5; // definition and initializing d
and f.
byte z = 22; // definition and initializes z.
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char x = 'x'; // the variable x has the value

'x'.

For definition without an initializer: variables with static storage duration are implicitly
initialized with NULL (all bytes have the value 0); the initial value of all other variables is
undefined.

Variable Declaration in C:
A variable declaration provides assurance to the compiler that there is one variable existing
with the given type and name so that compiler proceed for further compilation without
needing complete detail about the variable. A variable declaration has its meaning at the time
of compilation only, compiler needs actual variable declaration at the time of linking of the
program.

Example
Try following example, where variables have been declared at the top, but they have been
defined and initialized inside the main function:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h> 2

main ()
{
/* variable definition: */
int a, b;
int c;
float f;

/* actual initialization */
a = 10;
b = 20;

c = a + b;
printf("value of c : %d \n", c);

f = 70.0/3.0;
printf("value of f : %f \n", f);

getch();
}

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

value of c : 30
value of f : 23.333334
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Constants
The constants refer to fixed values that the program may not alter during its execution. These
fixed values are also called literals.

Constants can be of any of the basic data types like an integer constant, a floating constant, a
character constant, or a string literal. There are also enumeration constants as well.

The constants are treated just like regular variables except that their values cannot be
modified after their definition.

Escape sequence
Escape
Meaning
sequence

\\ \ character

\' ' character

\" " character

\? ? character

\a Alert or bell

\b Backspace

\n Newline

\t Horizontal tab

\v Vertical tab
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Following is the example to show few escape sequence characters:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h> 3

main()
{
printf("Hello\tWorld\n\n");

getch(); }

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

Hello World

Defining Constants
There are two simple ways in C to define constants:

1. Using #define preprocessor.

2. Using const keyword.

The #define Preprocessor

Following is the form to use #define preprocessor to define a constant:

#define identifier value

Following example explains it in detail:

#include <stdio.h> 4
#include <conio.h>

#define LENGTH 10
#define WIDTH 5
#define NEWLINE '\n'

int main()
{

int area;

area = LENGTH * WIDTH;

printf("value of area : %d", area);
printf("%c", NEWLINE);
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getch();
}

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

value of area : 50

The const Keyword

You can use const prefix to declare constants with a specific type as follows:

const type variable = value;

Following example explains it in detail:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h> 5

int main()
{
const int LENGTH = 10;
const int WIDTH = 5;
const char NEWLINE = '\n';
int area;

area = LENGTH * WIDTH;

printf("value of area : %d", area);
printf("%c", NEWLINE);

getch();
}

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

value of area : 50

Note that it is a good programming practice to define constants in CAPITALS.