C P NOTES

SUBMITTED BY :

Dewanand Giri

BSC.CSIT first sem

SEC A

Roll:8

SUBMITTED TO :

Prof.Mohan Bhandari
 CHAPTER 2
ELEMENTS OF C
*Every computer programming language is a set of syntax

rules which can be formally stated as technical specifications.

* However, many languages like C are created under some

specific historic settings in which standardization of the

language is not the most important thing at its creation time.

● This causes big problems since the lack of standardization

lays the foundation of incompatible language dialects.

● the language needs to be improved by adding new language

features and syntactic structures. (This could only be

achieved by updating a pre-exist standard so that every

compiler vendor knows how to implement the new

features.)

That's why we have C standards.

*The standard called K & R C was actually an informal

specification based on the first edition of the extremely popular

book, ‘The C Programming Language’, published in 1978 by

Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie; hence, the name K&R

after Kernighan and Ritchie.

*K&R C not only acted as an informal standards

specification for C but also added language features like the

new data types long int and unsigned int and the compound

assignment operator. A standardized I/O library was also

proposed by K&R C.

ANSI

Even though K&R C was accepted by many programmers as

the basic standard of C, it was not the Complete standard, and

nobody could have been persuaded into accepting it as the

official standard of C.
So, it was absolutely essential for some standards

organization to accept the challenge of coming up with an

official standard for C.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI)

addressed this issue in 1983 by forming a committee, and the

final draft of the standards it formulated was released in

1989. This is the reason why ANSI C is also called C89.

C99

C99 is the informal name given to the ISO/IEC 9899:1999

standards specification for C that was adopted in 1999. The

C99 standard added five more keywords to ANSI C, and the

total number of keywords became 37. The keywords added in

C99 are _Bool, _Complex, _Imaginary, inline and restrict. The

keyword _Bool is used to declare a new integer type capable of

storing 0 and 1. The keywords _Complex and _Imaginary are

used to declare complex and imaginary floating point type

variables to handle complex numbers. The keyword inline is

used to declare inline functions in C, similar to C++ inline

functions. The keyword restrict is used to tell the compiler

that for the lifetime of the pointer, only the pointer itself or a

value directly derived from it will be used to access the object

to which it points. New header files like , , , , etc, were also

added in C99. A new integer data type called long long int with

a minimum size of 8 bytes was added in C99.

C11

C11 is the current and latest standard of the C programming

language and, as the name suggests, this standard was adopted

in 2011. The formal document describing the C11 standard is

called ISO/IEC 9899:2011. With C11, seven more keywords

were added to the C programming language, thereby making

the total number of keywords, 44. The seven keywords added

to C99 are _Alignas, _Alignof, _Atomic, _Generic, _Noreturn,

_Static_assert and _Thread_local. Consider the C11 program

noreturn.c shown below, which uses the keyword _Noreturn.

Embedded C

The standard known as Embedded C is slightly different from

all the others. C from K&R C to C11 depicts the changes of a

programming language over time, based on user requirements.

But the Embedded C standard was proposed to customise the

C language in such a way that it can cater to the needs of

embedded system programmers.

Fundamental of C

Program is a set of instructions to interact with computers.

The programs are written in programing language.

C is a procedural programming language developed at AT &

T’s Bell Laboratories of USA in 1972. It was designed and

written by a man named Dennis Ritchie.

C program is a sequence of characters that will be converted by

the C compiler into machine code.

Character set of C

Character set is a package of valid characters recognized by

compiler/interpreter. Each natural language has its own

alphabet and characters set as the basic building. We combine

different alphabets to make a word, sentence, paragraph and a

meaningful passage. Similarly each computer language has

their own character set. Particularly, C also has its own

character set, shown in following table:

Token

A token is the smallest unit in a 'C' program. A token is

divided into six different types as follows:

1. Keywords
Keywords are the predefined reserved (built-in) words

whose meaning has already been defined to the c compiler.

A programmer can’t use the keywords for another task

than the task for which it has been defined. For example:

a programmer can’t use the keyword for variable names.

There are 32 keywords in c, which are listed in figure:

2.Identifiers

Identifiers are the user defined names and

consists of a sequence of letters and digits with

letter or underscore as a first character. It

may be the name of the variables, functions,

arrays, etc. In identifiers we can use both

upper and lower cases.

Rules for Identifiers

● First characters must be an alphabet or underscore.
 ● Must consist of only alphabets, digits or underscore.

● Cannot use a keyword.

● Must not contain white spaces. To connect two words

underscore can be used.

Examples for valid or invalid identifier

a. record1 →This is a valid identifier.

b. file_3 →This is a valid identifier.

c. #tax →Invalid identifier because identifier must begin with

a letter and special character like # is not permitted in

identifiers.

d. goto →Invalid identifier because keywords cannot be used

as an identifier.

e. Name-and-address →Invalid identifier because hyphen or

dash is not permitted.

f. void →Invalid identifier because keywords cannot be used as

an identifier.

3. Constants

Constant in C refers to fixed values that do not change during

execution of a program. C supports several types of constants,

such as numeric constants and character constants.

Numeric constants:

It consists of:

Integer Constants: It refers to the sequence of digits with

no decimal points. The three kinds of integer constants are:

• Decimals: Decimal numbers are set of digits from 0 to 9

with leading +ve or –ve sign. For example: 121, -512 etc.
• Octals: Octal numbers are any combination of digits from
set 0 to 7 with leading 0. For example: 0121, 0375 etc.

• Hexadecimals: Hexadecimal numbers are the sequence of

digits 0-9 and alphabets a-f (AF) with preceding 0X or 0x.

For example: 0xAB23, 0X787 etc.

Real or Floating point Constants: They are the numeric

constants with decimal points. The real constants are further

categorized as:

• Fractional Real constant: They are the set of digits from

0 to 9 with decimal points. For example: 394.7867, 0.78676

etc. • Exponential Real constants: In the exponential form,

the constants are represented in two form: Mentissia E

exponent; Where, the Mentissia is either integer or real

constant but the exponent is always in integer form. For

example: 21565.32 = 2.156532 E4, where E4 = 104 .

Character constant:

Character constant are the set of alphabets. Every character

has some integer value known as American Standard Code for

Information Interchange (ASCII). The character constants

are further categories as:

Single character constant:

It contains a single character enclosed with in a pair of single

quote mark (‘ ’). Thus, ‘X’, ‘5’ are characters but X, 5 are not.

String constant:
String constants are a sequence of characters enclosed in

double quotes marks (“ ”). They may be letters, numbers,

special symbols or blank spaces. For example: “Hello”,

“X+Y”. Note: ‘x’ ≠ “x”

Characters ASCII Values

A-Z (65 – 90)

a-z (97 – 122)

0-9 (48 – 57)

4. Delimiters

Delimiters are small system components that separate the

various elements (variables, constants, statements) of a

program. They are also known as separators. Some of the

delimiters are:

• Comma: It is used to separate two or more variables,

constants.

• Semicolon: It is used to indicate the end of a statement.

• Apostrophes (single quote): It is used to indicate character

constant.

• Double quotes: It is used to indicate a string.

• White space: Space, tab, new line etc.

#include
void main()
{
int a,b,c[10];
label_num:
printf("hi");
goto label_num:
}
5. Operators

C supports a rich set of operators. An operator is a symbol

that tells the computer to perform mathematical or logical

operations on operands. Operators are used in programs to

manipulate data.

Variables

A variable is a data name that may be used to store a data

value. Unlike constants that remain unchanged during the

execution of a program, a variable may take different values at

different times during execution. Constants supplied by the

user are stored in a block of memory by the help of variables.

Consider an expression: 2*x + 3*y = 5. In this expression the

quantities x and y are variable. A variable is a named location

in memory that is used to hold certain values.

- Rules for declaring variable name

1. Every variable name in C must start with a letter or

underscore.

2. A valid variable name should not contain commas or

blanks.

3. Valid variable name should not be keyword.

4. A variable name must be declared before using it.

-Declaring variable

After defining suitable variable names, we

must declare them before use in our program.

The declaration deals with two things:

- It tells the compiler what the variable name

is.

- It specifies what type of data the variable

can hold.

Syntax:

Data_type variable_names;

For example:

int account_number;

float a, b, c;

char name[10];
Data Types

Data types are used to declare the variables and tell the

compiler what types of data the variable will hold. Data type

is useful in C that tells the computer about the type and nature

of the value to be stored in a variable. The type of a variable

determines how much space it occupies in storage and how the

bit pattern stored is interpreted. Generally, the data types can

be categorized as:

1. Primary Data Types

These are the basic data types. There are four basic data types

in C (Integer, Character, Float and double) They are

integral data type(integer and constant fall under this

type),real or floating data type and void type.

2. Derived (or Secondary) Data Types

The secondary (derived) data types are a collection of primary

(primitive) data types. These are derived from the primary

data types. Example: array, union, structure, etc.

3. User Defined Data Types

The data types defined by the user are known as user defined

data types. Example: enum(enumerated data type) and

typedef (type definition data type).

Basic Structure of a C Program:

➢ Documentation section : The documentation section consists

of a set of comment lines giving the name of the program, the

author and other details, which the programmer would like to

use later.

➢ Link section : The link section provides instructions to the

compiler to link functions from the system library.

➢ Definition section : The definition section defines all

symbolic constants.

➢ Global declaration section : There are some variables that

are used in more than one function. Such variables are called

global variables and are declared in the global declaration

section that is outside of all the functions. This section also

declares all the user-defined functions.

➢ main () function section : Every C program must have one

main function section. This section contains two parts;

declaration part and executable part

➢ Declaration part : The declaration part declares all the

variables used in the executable part.

➢ Executable part : There is at least one statement in the

executable part. These two parts must appear between the

opening and closing braces. The program execution begins at the

opening brace and ends at the closing brace. The closing brace

of the main function is the logical end of the program. All

statements in the declaration and executable part end with a

semicolon.

➢ Subprogram section : The subprogram section contains all

the user-defined functions that are called in the main ()

function. Userdefined functions are generally placed

immediately after the main () function, although they may

appear in any order. Note:All sections, except the main ()

function section may be absent when they are not required.

➢ Sample C Program:
In C many library functions are grouped category-wise and

stored in different files known as header files. Ex. stdio.h

Statement

A statement is a command given to the computer that instructs

the computer to take a specific action, such as display to the

screen, or collect input. A computer program is made up of a

series of statements. Example:

a. Iteration Statements (for, while etc)

b. Selection Statements (if, if then etc)

c. Jump Statements (goto etc)