Book Image

Learn C Programming

By : Jeff Szuhay
Book Image

Learn C Programming

By: Jeff Szuhay

Overview of this book

C is a powerful general-purpose programming language that is excellent for beginners to learn. This book will introduce you to computer programming and software development using C. If you're an experienced developer, this book will help you to become familiar with the C programming language. This C programming book takes you through basic programming concepts and shows you how to implement them in C. Throughout the book, you'll create and run programs that make use of one or more C concepts, such as program structure with functions, data types, and conditional statements. You'll also see how to use looping and iteration, arrays, pointers, and strings. As you make progress, you'll cover code documentation, testing and validation methods, basic input/output, and how to write complete programs in C. By the end of the book, you'll have developed basic programming skills in C, that you can apply to other programming languages and will develop a solid foundation for you to advance as a programmer.
Table of Contents (33 chapters)
1
Section 1: C Fundamentals
10
Section 2: Complex Data Types
19
Section 3: Memory Manipulation
22
Section 4: Input and Output
28
Section 5: Building Blocks for Larger Programs

Summary

Whew!

You've learned an enormous amount about the program development cycle and setting up your C development environment in this chapter. Getting Hello, world! to compile and run is a far larger accomplishment for beginners than they might imagine. You have a working text editor, a working compiler, and you've begun manipulating programs in a command-line interpreter. You have probably experienced frustration to an extent you've rarely experienced before. I, like many programmers before you, feel your pain. We have all lived that pain. And with luck, I'm here to help take away some of that pain. In the rest of this book, we'll explore ways to optimize this whole experience.

You have begun to learn that programming is about solving problems. While we haven't solved many interesting programming problems yet, you are just beginning your journey from simple programs and problems to far more complex programs and problems. We'll encounter a few of these later.

Furthermore, you are now aware of ways to make your programs clearer to both yourself – especially months after you've written the code – and to others who might later be tasked with modifying your code for new demands.

To be sure, getting a C++, C#, Objective-C, or JavaScript environment up and running would be similar yet subtly different.

In the next chapter, we will go into much more detail about how Hello, world! works and then modify it in some interesting ways to learn about statements, blocks, and functions – the building blocks of larger and more interesting programs.

Woohoo! You did it! Isn't programming fun?