Book Image

Practical C Programming

By : B. M. Harwani

Book Image

Practical C Programming

By: B. M. Harwani

Overview of this book

Used in everything from microcontrollers to operating systems, C is a popular programming language among developers because of its flexibility and versatility. This book helps you get hands-on with various tasks, covering the fundamental as well as complex C programming concepts that are essential for making real-life applications. You’ll start with recipes for arrays, strings, user-defined functions, and pre-processing directives. Once you’re familiar with the basic features, you’ll gradually move on to learning pointers, file handling, concurrency, networking, and inter-process communication (IPC). The book then illustrates how to carry out searching and arrange data using different sorting techniques, before demonstrating the implementation of data structures such as stacks and queues. Later, you’ll learn interesting programming features such as using graphics for drawing and animation, and the application of general-purpose utilities. Finally, the book will take you through advanced concepts such as low-level programming, embedded software, IoT, and security in coding, as well as techniques for improving code performance. By the end of this book, you'll have a clear understanding of C programming, and have the skills you need to develop robust apps.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Working with Arrays

Working with Arrays

Inserting an element in an array

Multiplying two matrices

Finding the common elements in two arrays

Finding the difference between two sets or arrays

Finding the unique elements in an array

Finding whether a matrix is sparse

Merging two sorted arrays into a single array

Free Chapter

Managing Strings

Managing Strings

Determining whether the string is a palindrome

Finding the occurrence of the first repetitive character in a string

Displaying the count of each character in a string

Counting vowels and consonants in a sentence

Converting the vowels in a sentence to uppercase

Exploring Functions

Exploring Functions

What is a stack?

Finding whether a number is an Armstrong number

Returning maximum and minimum values in an array

Finding the greatest common divisor using recursion

Converting a binary number into a hexadecimal number

Finding whether a number is a palindrome

Preprocessing and Compilation

Preprocessing and Compilation

Performing conditional compilation with directives

Applying assertions for validation

Using assertions to ensure a pointer is not pointing to NULL

Catching errors early with compile-time assertions

Applying stringize and token-pasting operators

Deep Dive into Pointers

Deep Dive into Pointers

What is a pointer?

Reversing a string using pointers

Finding the largest value in an array using pointers

Sorting a singly linked list

Finding the transpose of a matrix using pointers

Accessing a structure using a pointer

File Handling

Functions used in file handling

Reading a text file and converting all characters after the period into uppercase

Displaying the contents of a random file in reverse order

Counting the number of vowels in a file

Replacing a word in a file with another word

Encrypting a file

Implementing Concurrency

Implementing Concurrency

What are processes and threads?

Performing a task with a single thread

Performing multiple tasks with multiple threads

Using mutex to share data between two threads

Understanding how a deadlock is created

Avoiding a deadlock

Networking and Inter-Process Communication

Networking and Inter-Process Communication

Communicating between processes using pipes

Communicating between processes using FIFO

Communicating between the client and server using socket programming

Communicating between processes using a UDP socket

Passing a message from one process to another using the message queue

Communicating between processes using shared memory

Sorting and Searching

Sorting and Searching

Searching for an item using binary search

Arranging numbers in ascending order using bubble sort

Arranging numbers in ascending order using insertion sort

Arranging numbers in ascending order using quick sort

Arranging numbers in descending order using heap sort

Working with Graphs

Working with Graphs

Types of graphs

Creating an adjacency matrix representation of a directed graph

Creating an adjacency matrix representation of an undirected graph

Creating an adjacency list representation of a directed graph

Carrying out the breadth-first traversal of a graph

Carrying out the depth-first traversal of a graph

Creating minimum spanning trees using Prim's algorithm

Creating minimum spanning trees using Kruskal's algorithm

Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms

Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms

Doubly linked lists (two-way linked lists)

Circular linked lists

Implementing a stack using a singly linked list

Implementing a doubly or two-way linked list

Implementing a circular linked list

Creating a binary search tree and performing an inorder traversal on it recursively

Performing postorder traversal of a binary tree non-recursively

Creativity with Graphics

Creativity with Graphics

List of OpenGL functions

Drawing four graphical shapes

Drawing a circle

Drawing a line between two mouse clicks

Making a bar graph of the supplied values

Making an animated bouncing ball

Using MySQL Database

Using MySQL Database

Functions in MySQL

Creating a MySQL database and tables

Displaying all the built-in tables in a default mysql database

Storing information in MySQL database

Searching for the desired information in the database

Updating information in the database

Deleting data from the database using C

General-Purpose Utilities

General-Purpose Utilities

Dynamic memory allocation

Registering a function that is called when a program exits

Measuring the clock ticks and CPU seconds required in the execution of a function

Performing dynamic memory allocation

Handling signals

Improving the Performance of Your Code

Improving the Performance of Your Code

Using the register keyword in C code for better efficiency

Taking input faster in C

Applying loop unrolling for faster results

Low-Level Programming

Low-Level Programming

Introduction to bitwise operators

Converting a binary number into a decimal using a bitwise operator

Converting a decimal into binary using a bitwise operator

Converting a decimal number into binary using bit masking

Introduction to assembly coding

Multiplying two numbers using the inline assembly language in C

Dividing two numbers using assembly code in C

Embedded Software and IoT

Embedded Software and IoT

Technical requirements

Introduction to embedded systems

Introduction to IoT

Toggling the port of a microcontroller in Embedded C (blinking LED)

Incrementing the value of a port in Embedded C

Toggle voltage in output pin using Arduino (blinking LED)

Taking input from the serial port using Arduino

Sensing the temperature using Arduino with the LM35 sensor

Applying Security in Coding

Applying Security in Coding

Buffer overflow

Understanding how a buffer overflow occurs

Learning how to avoid a buffer overflow

Understanding how a vulnerability occurs while copying strings

Learning how to write secure code while copying strings

Understanding the errors that occur while formatting strings

Learning how to avoid errors while formatting strings

Understanding how vulnerabilities occur while accessing files in C

Learning how to avoid vulnerabilities while writing a file in C

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Understanding how vulnerabilities occur while accessing files in C

Let's assume that you wrote a program to create a text file named file1.txt. In such programs, a malicious user or hacker might add some soft links to some important or sensitive file in the file that you want to create. As a result, it will lead to overwriting of the important file.

How to do it...

We will start by assuming that some important file by the name of file2.txt already exists on your computer and contains some sensitive information. Here are the steps that a malicious user or hacker can use in your program to create a file to overwrite file2.txt:

A file pointer is defined.
The hacker might create a soft link and attach a sensitive...