C Programming Course – Introduction

Is it right for me?

This C programming course is intended for delegates with programming experience wishing to gain detailed knowledge of the language.

It is ideally suited for software engineers and application and system programmers working with the C language. Participants should have previous programming experience in either high-level or assembly languages.

This C programming course relies entirely on a 'hands-on' approach. Candidates, under the trainer's guidance, develop example programs to illustrate features of the language and are encouraged to experiment with these to promote a full understanding.

In parallel are programming exercises intended to utilise the newly learned techniques in a problem-solving context.

What will I get out of it?

By the end of the C training course delegates will be able to:

• Use an editor, compiler and linker to create and run C programs
• Implement algorithms using C's operators and control structures
• Structure a solution using C's function and parameter passing mechanisms
• Utilise existing components from the C standard library
• Create data structures using C's composite types
• Perform file operations in C
• Manipulate heap memory

What does it cover?

Numeric types

• Integer and float types – variables and literals
• Arithmetic operators
• Type conversion and promotion
• Console input and output

Control flow

• Branching - 'if..else' and 'switch'
• Looping - 'while', 'do..while' and 'for'
• 'break' and 'continue'
• Nested control structures

Operators and expressions

• Relational and logical operators
• Bitwise operations
• Indirection and pointer types
• The conditional operator
• Increment and decrement
• The assignment operators

Functions

• Program structure and library routines
• Passing parameters by value
• Passing pointers
• Using the return mechanism
• Scope and linkage considerations

Arrays

• Index notation and pointer arithmetic
• Array initialisers
• Arrays of pointers
• Two-dimensional arrays

Strings

• The C string convention
• String variables and literals
• Arrays of strings
• Command-line parameters
• String library functions

Record structures

• Field access via the 'dot' operator
• Structs, struct tags, struct initialisers
• Complex data structures
• Unions

File operations

• Opening files for reading and writing
• Using library routines for file I/O
• Text versus binary files for structs

Dynamic memory

• Dynamic memory allocation using 'malloc'
• Heap management and memory leakage