BIRLA INSTTUTE OF TECHNOLOGY & SCIENCE, PILANI (RAJ.

)
CS F111 Computer Programming
LAB SESSION #3
(Writing basic C Programs)

We will start implementing and executing C programs from today’s lab. All labs, henceforth,
shall focus on programming in C. We expect you to clearly understand how to create files
using sublime text and access/edit them on the UNIX terminal, either in WSL or in Ubuntu.
Please follow the video instructions of lab session 2 if you are not familiar with it.

Create a dedicated directory “myprogs” in your home directory if you are an ubuntu user or
in ‘D’ (or ‘E’ or any) drive of windows if you are a WSL user. You can create/edit your C
program-related files using sublime text and store them in “myprogs” directory. You can
create a directory inside “myprogs” for this particular lab, say a directory with the name
“lab3”.

We will write our first C Program in this lab. Please revise the lecture slides of module 3
before you start. The explanation includes what are the header files, printf(), scanf(),
etc. We will use them to write our programs in this lab. Let us begin.

1. Write a program that prints “Hello World!”.

In this program we will use the printf() statement to print “Hello World!”. Here is the
program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
printf(“Hello World!”);
return 0;
}

Create a file hello_world.c in the directory “lab3” using the sublime text editor and copy
this program into it and save the file. Please note that any C program must be stored in a
file that has “.c” extension. This is required by the C compiler. C compiler also reads files
with “.h” extension. We will study about them later.

On your terminal, navigate to “lab3” directory (using the cd command). Then run the
following commands:

$ gcc hello_world.c
$ ./a.out

You will see that “Hello World!” is printed on the screen. However, the terminal prompt has
appeared beside the printed statement. To move the prompt to the next line, you shall need
to replace the previous printf statement with the following new statement:

printf(“Hello World!\n”);

“\n” is the new line character that is used to move to the next line on the terminal. It is one
of the many escape sequences that the C language offers. Check out this link to know
more about escape sequences.

Please note a few things in the program we just wrote. int main() is the definition of the
main function, which is the place from where any C program starts its execution.

return 0 is the statement that states that the program has terminated. The return value is
the exit code of your program. The shell (or any other application that ran the program) can
read and use it. The 0 exit code is a widely accepted convention for 'OK the program

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execution was successful’. Any arbitrary C Program you write always starts with int
main() and should contain return statement at the end.

Also, when you compiled your program with gcc hello_world.c command, it creates an
executable with the name a.out. You can use ls command after compilation to check if the
executable is actually created. And then you execute that executable using the command
./a.out. This executes the program and performs the intended task of the program, which
in our case is printing of “Hello World!” statement.

Okay, let us now advance further into our second program for today. In this program we
will see how to add two numbers and print their sum. Here it is:

2. Write a program to add two numbers and print its sum.

In this program, we will make use of integer variables to store the numbers. A variable is
nothing but a placeholder for a value that you want to store. Let us see the following
program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
int num1, num2, num3;
num1 = 2;
num2 = 4;
num3 = num1 + num2; // computing the sum of num1 and num2
printf(“The sum is: %d \n”, num3); // printing the sum
return 0;
}

Create a file sum.c in the directory “lab3” using sublime text editor and copy this program
into it and save the file. Then compile it using gcc sum.c and execute it with ./a.out.

In this program we had used the variables num1, num2 and num3, which are of the type int
(or integer). int variables in C can hold both negative and positive integers. In this
program, we store the value 2 in the variable num1, value 4 in the variable num2, compute
the sum of num1 and num3 store in the variable num3.

Then we print the value of num3 using the printf statement. Please note that “%d” in the
above printf statement indicates that the value we are trying to print is of the type “int”
(or integer). This is known as a format specifier. We shall have to use “%f” for printing float
values, “%lf” for printing double values and “%c” to print characters, which we will see in
further lecture and lab sessions.

3. What was there in num1, num2 & num3 before you assigned any value in the program
2? Are there some default values? Try printing the values before the assignment.

Alright, we have seen how to compute sum of two numbers and print its value. Now, the
user wishes to give the values of num1 and num2 during the program execution, instead of
giving their values while writing the program. For this we can use the scanf statement that
scans for input from the user during the program execution and stores the value in a
variable. Let us see it in the next program:

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4. Take input of two numbers from the user and print their sum.

Here is the program:

#include <stdio.h>

int main()
{
int num1, num2, num3;
printf(“Please enter the first number:”);
scanf(“%d”, &num1); // captures an integer value and stores in num1
printf(“Please enter the second number:”);
scanf(“%d”, &num2); // captures an integer value and stores in num2
num3 = num1 + num2; // computing the sum of num1 and num2
printf(“The sum is: %d \n”, num3); // printing the sum
return 0;
}

Create a file sum2.c in the directory “lab3” using sublime text editor and copy this program
into it and save the file. Then compile it using gcc sum2.c and execute it with ./a.out.
Please note that each time you create compile a new file, the old a.out is replaced with a
new a.out specific to the most recently compiled program. If you want to keep a separate
executable for each program, then follow the following commands:

$ gcc sum2.c -o sum2_exe

$ ./sum2_exe

The executable that got created after compilation of sum2.c is now sum2_exe instead of
a.out. This is what the -o flag is used for. And you can execute this by ./sum2_exe.

The above program, takes two values from the user, prints its sum. Note the syntax of the
scanf() statement:

scanf(“%d”,&num1);

This indicates that the value you are scanning is an integer (%d) and you want to store that
value in num1 by specifying the address of num1. Address is nothing but the location in the
main memory where num1 is stored. The address of a variable is accessed by prefixing &
symbol before the variable name. In this case we had used &num1 to denote the address of
the variable num1 in the main memory, which you had passed as input to the scanf
statement for it to store the scanned value into num1. This is how scanf works.

Now, let us try to write a few programs by ourselves using simple printf, scanf
statements, integer variables and operations over integer variables. A few operations over
integer variables include:

Addition:
num3 = num1 + num2

Subtraction:
num3 = num1 - num2

Multiplication:
num3 = num1 * num2

Integer Division:
num3 = num1 / num2 (NOTE: This is integer division 3/2 is not 1.5)

Modulus (or remainder after division)

num3 = num1 % num2

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5. Write a C program to calculate the total distance travelled by a vehicle in “t” seconds,
given by: d = ut + ½ at2. Get user input for u, a and t. Output the value of d. You can
create intermediate variables to store intermediate values. For example you can create a
temporary variable temp1 to store the multiplication of u and t, and another temporary
variable temp2 to store ½ at2. And then add temp1 and temp2 to get the value of d.

6. Take the above C program and copy it without the .c extension (Hint: use the cp
command on Linux). Now try compiling this copy. Some C compilers will complain;
others will not. On Unix systems, the complaint may be quite cryptic. What happens on
your system?

7. Make the following changes in the code written in question 4 and observe the effect of
each change on the compilation process:

a) Delete a semicolon and see what happens.

b) Leave out one of the braces
c) Remove one of the parentheses next to the main function

By simulating errors like these, you can learn about different compiler errors, and that
will make your typos easier to find when you make them for real!

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Additional Practice Exercise for Home Work

1. Write a C program that reads in an integer denoting number of days. It prints the
number of years, number of months and the number of days that constitute the input
number of days. For example, if the input number is 403, it should print 1(year), 1(month),
13(days). For simplicity: there is no need to consider leap years and assume all months
have 30 days. [Hint: Use modulus (%) and division (/) operators. End of Hint]

2. Write a C program to enter Principal (P), Time (T), Rate of Interest (R) and calculate
Simple Interest (SI) and show it to the user. Note that SI = PxRxT.

3. Write a C program to print a block F using hash (#), where the F has a height of six
characters and width of five and four characters. And also to print a big 'C'.
Expected Output:

######
#
#
#####
#
#
#
######
## ##
#
#
#
#
#
## ##
######

4. There are four main stages through which a source code is passed in order to finally get a
runnable executable. They are: pre-processing, compilation, assembly and linking. By
invoking gcc command, all these steps are accomplished, and you get the resultant
executable in a.out. You can stop this pipeline at a specific stage by giving specific options
for gcc.
For instance, try gcc –S lab3_1.c for just invoking the assembler. The assembly code for
the C program is now generated and stored in lab3_1.s that you can inspect using sublime
text. You may not understand the statements, but you should learn to identify how an
assembly program looks like.

5. A computer manufacturing company has the following monthly compensation policy to

their salespersons:
Minimum base salary : 1500.00
Bonus for every computer sold : 200.00
Commission on the total monthly sales : 2 per cent

Since the prices of computers are changing, the sale price of each computer is fixed at the
beginning of every month. Write a C program, “computer_sales.c”, to compute a sales-
person's bonus, commission and gross salary. Your program should take the number of
computers sold (in a month) and the sale price of a computer as user input.

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