Overview

 Introduction to Computer
 Program and Programming Languages
 Types of Programming Languages
 Low-Level Languages
 Assembly languages
 High-Level Languages
 History of Programming Languages
 Translators
 Compiler
 Interpreter
 Typical C Program Development Environment
 The C Programming Language
 Characteristics of C language
 Basic Program Structure in C Language

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Introduction
 Computer
A computer is an electronic device which is capable to
• receive the data,
• process the data, and
• provide results
according to a set of instructions

 Program
A program is a set of instructions of a computer language, where each
instruction tells the computer to do something:
For example,
• get two numbers as input,
• add these numbers,
• print the sum as output

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Programming Languages
 Programming Language
 A programming language defines the rules for writing instructions
 Programmers write instructions in a programming language

 Types of Programming Languages

A number of programming languages are in use today and are generally
categorized as follows:

 Low-Level Languages
 Assembly languages

 High-Level Languages

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Types of Languages
 Low-Level language or Machine/Binary Language
 This language consists of binary numbers to perform a task

 Machine language is directly understandable to the computer

 Machine languages are machine dependent (i.e., a particular machine

language can be used on only one type of computer)

 Programming in machine-language is very slow, tiresome and error prone

for the programmers

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Types of Languages
 Assembly language
 It was developed to overcome the problems with machine language

 Assembly language uses English-like abbreviations to programming, such as

ADD for adding numbers

 As the assembly language is not the machine own’s language, so translators

were developed called assemblers

 Assemblers translate the assembly-language programs into the machine

language programs

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Types of Languages
 High level language
 In early programming languages, the programmers had to write many
instructions to perform a single task

 The high-level languages use a single instruction to perform many tasks

 Compilers or interpreters are used as translators to convert high-level

language programs into machine language

 C, C++, Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C#, Python and Java are the most
commonly used high-level programming languages today

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Types of translators
 Compiler

 Interpreter

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Translators and Types
 Translator
 A translator is used convert a high level language
program (source code) into machine language (object
code)

Source code object code

 Types of translators
 Compiler
 Interpreter

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Compiler vs. Interpreter
 Compiler
 A compiler first reads the whole source code, and converts
it into a its equivalent machine language, if there are no
errors(bugs)
 Reports a list of errors, if errors in the source code
 Faster translation
 C, C++, C# etc. are the examples of compiled languages

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Compiler vs. Interpreter
 Interpreter
 An interpreter performs line by line translation
 It first reads the first line of the source code, and converts it into a its
equivalent machine code (if no error), then the second line, and so on
 If there is error, it reports it and the user has to correct it, and after this,
the source code to object code translation occurs
 Slower translation than compiler
 Java, Python etc. are called interpreted languages

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Why study programming Languages?
 In 1967, Sammet, an American computer scientist and one of the
developers of the COBOL programming language, reported 120
programming languages commonly used

 Today , these languages are many more

 Most programmers never use more than a few, some limit their
career to just on or two

 The goal in learning about a language is its fundamental design

concepts and how this affects its implementation

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Programming Languages Popularity

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ 12
Programming Domains
 Scientific applications(Fortran)

 Business Applications(COBOL)

 Artificial Intelligence(LISP, Prolog)

 System Programming(C )

 Web software (HTML, PHP, Java)

 General Purpose (Python)

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The Ideal Way to Do Computing
 The ideal way to ask computer to do something is to order it in a
natural language e.g.
 I want to view this webpage
 Calculate my annual tax
 etc.

 However, today’s computer’s are not intelligent enough to

understand our orders in natural language

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Where We Are in Computers?
 At the very basic level, computers use the concept of an electrical pulse
 Low voltage is represented as 0
 High voltage is represented as 1
 To instruct a computer, we need ask the computer in the language of 0s and
1s commonly known as machine language
 For example, 5 is a number in natural language, so in the language of
0s and 1s, it becomes 101
 In Today’s computing, we use a high-level language to instruct the computer
 The compiler translates these instructions into the machine language

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Where are we going?
 The next step in computing is to use natural language over a high-level
language

 But we are many more years away from it

 A lot of research needs to be carried out before we actually see this

 Until then our task is to use high-level languages in its best possible
ways

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Program & Its Various Aspects

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What is Programming?
 When we say “programming” we are actually referring
to the science of transforming our intentions in a
high-level programming language

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Many Aspects of Programming
 Programming is controlling

 computer does exactly what you tell it to do

 Programming is teaching
 computer can only “learn” to do new things if you tell it how

 Programming is problem solving

 always trying to make computer do something useful — i.e., finding
an optimal travel route

 Programming is creative
 must find a good solution out of many possibilities

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Many Aspects of Programming
 Programming is modelling

 describe salient (relevant) properties and behaviours of a system

of components (objects)

 Programming is abstraction
 identify important features without getting lost in detail

 Programming is concrete
 must provide detailed instructions to complete task

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 C-Language
 History & characteristics of C language

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History of C language
 C language was developed by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson in
1972 at Bell Labs where they were working on Unix Operating System

 Dennis Ritchie is known as the founder of the C language

 C was developed to add additional features to its earlier

languages such as B, BCPL, etc.

 It inherits many features of B and BCPL languages

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Characteristics of C language
1. C is a General Purpose Programming Language

- This means that C language can be used to write a variety of

applications

2. C is a structured programming language

- This means that when you program in C language, a problem is

divided into several small units called functions

3. C is a simple language

- This means that C language is easy to use and has a vast

collection of keywords, operators, built-in functions and data
types

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Characteristics of C language
4. C is case sensitive language

- This means that in C language the lower case letters are

different from upper case letters

5. C is portable language

-This means that a program written in C language can be run on

different hardware platforms

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Characteristics of C language
6.C is a flexible language

-This means that C language can be used like a high level

language and like a low level language

7. C is easily available language

-The C software is easy to access and can be easily installed

on a user computer within a few minutes

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Characteristics of C language
8. C is easily debugged language
 The C is easy to debug
 The C compiler detects syntax errors quickly and easily and
displays the errors along with the line numbers of the code and
the error message

9. C has a number of in-built memory management functions that save

memory and improve the efficiency of the program

10. C has a rich set of library functions for various arithmetic and

trigonometric calculations
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C-Program Development Environment
(IDE)

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C IDE
 A C program development environment is called IDE(Integrated
Development Environment)
 Many IDEs available today and some are as follows
 DEVCpp
 Microsoft Visual Studio
 Eclipse
 NetBeans
 Code::Blocks
 etc.
 We use DEVCpp, for C program development in this course

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C Program Execution Phases

 C program goes through six phases to be executed. These

are as follows:
 Edit
 Preprocess
 Compile
 Link
 Load
 Execute

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C Program Execution Phases

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C Program Execution Phases

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Execution Phases
 Phase 1: Editing/Creating a Program
 Phase 1 consists of editing a file
 To edit a file, we use Dev C++ IDE
 A C program is typed or coded in the IDE
 After coding, the program is stored on a hard disk
 A C program file name should end with the .c extension

 Phases 2 : Preprocessing the Program

 In C language, a preprocessor program is executed automatically
before compilation begins
 Here the C preprocessor calls the preprocessor directives(e.g.
#include<…>)

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Execution Phases

 Phases 3 : Compiling the Program

 The compiler translates the c program code called source code into
machine language-code called object code
 The compiler translates the C program into machine-language code

 To compile the program, we use the compile command in the IDE

 Phase 4: Linking
 A linker links the object code for the missing functions to produce an
executable image

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Execution Phases

 Phase 5: Loading
 Before a program can be executed, the program must first be placed in
memory
 This is done by the loader, which takes the executable image from disk
and transfers it to memory
 Additional components from shared libraries that support the program
are also loaded

 Phase 6: Execution
 Finally, the computer, under the control of its CPU, executes the
program one instruction at a time
 To load and execute the program, we run the program in the IDE

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Basic Program Structure in C

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Basic Program Structure in C Language
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
// program statement_1;
// program statement_2
…
return 0;
}

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Writing Program in C using DEVCpp IDE

Steps to follow:
•Click on File
•Select New, and
•Click on Source File
•Start coding in the source file(in the figure, sample example)
•Save it with a name(e.g., first.c)
•Compile, and
•Run

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Writing Program in C using DEVCpp IDE

Sample
Program

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C Program Example

#include<stdio.h>

int main()

printf("Welcome to C language");

return 0;

}
Program output:
Welcome to C language

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Example: A simple C Program
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{

printf("Welcome Students\n");

Printf(“This is C language statement”);

return 0;
}

Program output:
Welcome Students
This is C language statement

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Escape Sequence in C

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Escape sequence
 Escape sequence is a set of characters followed by backslash (\),
which has a particular meaning for the compiler to do something
with the output statement

 For example, the escape sequence \n means newline, which causes

the cursor to position to the beginning of the next line on
the screen

 C language supports the following escape sequences

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Escape sequence

\b for backspace, remove one character at the back

\’ single quote, insert a single-quote character in a string

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Escape Sequence Example
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf(“This is\n C language statement \n”);
printf(“This\t is\t C\t language\t statement \n”);
printf(“ This\a is\a C\a language\a statement \n”);
printf(“ a\\b \n”);
printf(“ This is \”C language\” statement \n”);
printf(“ \’A\’ for Apple \n”);
printf(“ Hi\b \n”);

return 0;
}

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Escape Sequence Example…

Program output:
This is

C language statement

This is C language statement

This (alert) is (alert) C (alert) language (alert) statement

a\b

This is ”C language” statement

‘A’ for Apple

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Program Comments in C

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Comments
 Comments are used to document a program:
 Improve program readability and help other people read and understand your
program

 Dot cause the computer to perform any action when the program is run

 Ignored by the C compiler and do not cause any machine-language object code to be
generated

 Types of Comments:
 Single-line comments e.g. //This is first C program
 Multi-line comments e.g. /* This is first C program
Author: Ali
Dated: October 20, 2020 */

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Example: Comments
// A first program in C
/* Author: Ali
Dated: October 05, 2020
*/
#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf(“This is C language statement”);

return 0;
}

Program output:
This is C language statement

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