Types, Constants, Operators and Expressions

All C programs are made up of functions that perform operations on variables.

In this lecture we examine variables Variables are the basic building blocks of a

program Variables have: types, names, and constants Operations performed on variables using operators

Each operation forms an expression A statement is a collection of expressions

terminated by ;2

C is a “typed” language. We must explicitly define variables with a specific type.

Different types have different characteristics. Size: how many bytes of memory a variable occupies. Representation: what does the bit-pattern mean. Usage: what operations may be performed a variable.

By specifying types, we enable the compiler to perform a number of tasks for us: Compiler allocates fixed amount of memory for a given

type. A variable’s type determines what value it can represent

and what operations may be performed on it. Compiler can detect type-mismatch errors.

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Names are composed of alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers), and _ (underscore) Names may not start with a number Names are case sensitive; eg, step and Step are different

variables

Good Style: By convention, variable names begin with a lower-case letter. Short names are given to local variables, while longer more descriptive names to distant variables.

Local: step, top, i, j, x, fahr, flagDistant: lookup_table_index, nameListHead

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C has three basic data types1. Integer types: char, int2. Floating point types: float, double3. No type (an empty set): void

Different types have different properties: Values they can represent Operations that can be performed on them.

These types have finite precision and range. There is a limit to the size of a number (min, max) Floating point values have a limit to the number of

significant figures. Size of int may be qualified by long or short

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Basic building blocks of digital systems.

1 Bit = 1 Binary Digit Stores 1/0,

True/False 1 Byte = 8 Bits

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The standard does not specify exact sizes. The amount of memory storage allocated for a particular type will be different on different systems.

ISO C standard requires only that char is at least 8 bits short is at least 16 bits long is at least 32 bits short <= int <= long

Range of permissible values of integers is defined in limits.h

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ISO C does not specify the size of floating point types, or even that their sizes are different.

Simply says:float <= double <= long double

Range of permissible values of integers is defined in float.h

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signed explicitly tells the compiler that the

quantity is a signed integer (ie, the type may represent a negative number).

unsigned explicitly tells the compiler that the

quantity is an unsigned integer (ie, cannot represent a negative number). This doubles the size of the max representable number.

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An integer value is represented by a sequence of bits: base 2 numbers.

For a signed integer, the most-significant-bit (MSB) is the sign bit. If MSB is 0, the number is positive. If 1, the number is negative

(using a 2’s complement binary representation).

An unsigned integer does not have a sign bit, and the MSB is part of the actual number – extending the maximum possible value by a factor of 2.

Examples for 8-bit integers:

00000111 -> 7 (signed or unsigned)10000111 -> -121 (signed, 2’s complement)10000111 -> 135 (unsigned)

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signed char, -128 to 127, (-27 to 27 – 1) unsigned char, 0 to 255, (28 – 1) signed short, -32768 to 32767, (-215 to 215 – 1) unsigned short, 0 to 65535, (216 – 1) int, -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647, (-231 to 231 -

1) unsigned, 0 to 4,294,967,296, (232 - 1)

float, 1.2e-38 to 3.4e+38, (6 decimal digits precision)

double, 2.2e-308 to 1.8e+308, (15 decimal digits precision)

All are available in limit.h and float.h11

const indicates that a variable is intended to

remain constant and should not be changed.const int DoesNotChange = 5;DoesNotChange = 6; /* will not compile */

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There are many ways to represent the same integer value Decimal, 12 Octal, 014 Hexadecimal, 0x0C All represent the same binary value, 00001100

Consider the following 8-bit binary number

binary: 0110 1010 decimal: 2+8+32+64 = 106hex: 6 and 10 = 0x6A

a long constant is written like1234567890L or 1234567890l

for an unsigned integer, add the suffix U or u for an unsigned long integer, add the suffix UL or ul

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Specify by a decimal point and/or e or E3.141593. -.0012.25e-3

Are type double by default Can specify type float by appending an f

12.5f 7.F

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All data is stored as sets of bits.

2 main questions: How do we represent letters?

Convert to a number: e.g. ‘A’ = 1; ‘B’ = 2 etc. How do we communicate between different

systems? Use a standard conversion table.

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Standard method for representing characters as integers.

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Character constants are simply integers To represent characters, C uses a lookup table

Each character has a unique integer code ASCII table is most common code

Eg., Letter “R” we can represent by Its ASCII integer code: 82 or 0122 or 0x52 Or, use character constant:‘R’

The type of ‘R’ is an int not a char Some ASCII constants are defined as escape

sequences (for characters that are difficult or impossible to type)\n new line \t tab\b backspace \0 NUL character

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A string is a sequence of chars terminated by a NUL character, ‘\0’.

A string constant is written ase.g. “this is a string”

A string constant is automatically terminated by a NULe.g. |t|h|i|s| |i|s| |a| |s|t|r|i|n|g|\0|

WARNING! Don’t confuse a character constant

‘X’ which is an intwith a (null-terminated) string constant

“X” which is an array of two chars: |X|\0| Thus,

sizeof(‘X’) is 4 (for Win32) and sizeof(“X”) is 2

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In printf(), use conversion specifiers, prefixed by %

%c character - char%d decimal int%x hexadecimal int%o octal int

%f %e %g float%f %e %g double

Conversion specifiers MUST match the type of the variable it corresponds to, else the program will be incorrect.

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See Text Section 2.5 and 13.1 for more information.

Refer to any C textbook for more complete discussion on printf() and its conversion specifiers.

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Extremely bad practice to have “magic numbers” in code. It may be difficult to see what the number stands for, and code changes become error-prone.

Use #define to define named constants, all in the one place#define ARRAY_LENGTH2500#define BLOCK_SIZE 4096#define TRACK_SIZE 16*BLOCK_SIZE#define STRING “Hello World!\n”

Symbolic constants mean making changes of constants is easy and safe.

Example: tempf2.c

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Arithmetic operators are+ plus- minus* multiply/ divide= assignment% modulus (remainder after division)

The first 5 are valid for integer and floating-point types.

The % is valid only for integer types (including char).

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3.0 / 5.0 – equals 0.6 3 / 5 – integer division truncates, equals 0 17 / 6 – equals 2 18 % 7 - equals 4

2*7 + 5*9 – equals 14 + 45: 59

Show prime.c

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Precedence and order of evaluation.eg, a + b * c

Order of evaluation from left to right.

*, / and % take precedence over + and -, so that a + b * c is the same asa + (b * c)

Precedence table exists, but use brackets () instead for safety!!

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Overflow (integers have finite range)y = x + 1;z = x * y;

Overflow and signed/unsigned unsigned: modulo wrap around signed: undefined behaviour

Divide by zero (integers or floats)z = x / y;

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Increment ++ and decrement --++a is equivalent to a = a + 1

Valid operators on integer or floating-point numbers.

Two forms: preincrement and postincrement

int a=2, b, c;b = ++a; /* a=3 and b=3 */c = a++; /* a=4 and c=3 */

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Relational operators are> greater-than< less-than>= greater-than-or-equal-to<= less-than-or-equal-to== equal-to!= not-equal-to

These operators are valid for integer and floating-point types.

Evaluate to 1 if TRUE, and 0 if FALSE

3.2 < 7 equals 1, and x != x equals 0

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Logical operators are&& AND|| OR! NOT

&& and || connect multiple conditional expressions.

! negates a conditional expression (non-zero becomes 0, zero becomes 1).

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int a=1, b=2, c=3, d=3;a < b && b < c && c < d /* FALSE */a < b && b < c && c <= d /* TRUE */(a < b && b < c) || c < d /* TRUE */a && !b /* FALSE */

Show logical.c and leapyear.c && and || are evaluated left-to-right and, once the result of

TRUE or FALSE is known, evaluation stops – leaving the remaining expressions unevaluated. This is a useful feature, and leads to several common C idioms.

i = 0;while(i < SIZE && array[i] != val)

++i;

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Bitwise operators are& bitwise AND| bitwise OR^ bitwise XOR<< left shift>> right shift~ one’s complement (bitwise NOT)

Used to manipulate individual bits. Details in later lecture, mention here to avoid

confusion with logical operators. They cannot be used interchangeably. & is not &&, | is not ||, >> is not “much-greater-than”.

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Assignment operators - for example,a += b; is equivalent toa = a + b;

x *= y+1; is equivalent tox = x * (y+1);

Assignment also with other arithmetic operators: +,-,*,/,%

Show factorial.c

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One can write expressions with variables and constants of different types

The compiler performs implicit conversions on terms so each binary expression has same (larger) type.

(see Section 2.11 of lecture notes for more details)

int x = 2, y = 1;float z = 5.4;double a;a = y + x*z;

Type promotion occurs stepwise for each binary expression

1. (tmp1) = x*z, the variable x is promoted to float; and result stored as a float2. (tmp2) = y+(tmp1), the variable y is promoted to float3. a = (tmp2), the implicit temporary is promoted to double and result stored in

a

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