Chapter-1: Tour of Computer System

Chapter-1
Tour of Computer
System
Computer System
 A computer system consists of hardware and

systems software that work together to run
application programs.
Information is Bits and Context
 “hello” program begins life as a source

program (or source file) that the programmer
creates with an editor and saves in a text file
called hello.c.
The source program is a sequence of bits, each with
a value of 0 or 1, organized in 8-bit chunks called
bytes.
Each byte represents some text character in the
program.
Cont…
 Most modern systems represent text characters

using the ASCII standard that represents each
character with a unique byte-sized integer
value.
 The hello.c program is stored in a file as a
sequence of bytes. Each byte has an integer
value that corresponds to some character.
For example, the first byte has the integer value 35,
which corresponds to the character ‘#’.
ASCII code for Text Representation
Cont…
 All information in a system—including disk

files, programs stored in memory, user data
stored in memory and data transferred across a
network—is represented as a bunch of bits.
 As programmers, need to understand machine

representations of numbers because they are
not the same as integers and real numbers.
Programs are translated by other
Programs into Different Forms
 The hello program begins life as a high-level C
program
It can be read and understood by human beings in
that form.
 In order to run hello.c on the system
Individual C statements are translated by other
programs into a sequence of low-level machine-
language instructions.
Instructions are packaged in a form called an
executable object program and stored as a binary
disk file.
Compilation Process
Compilation System
 The program that performs four phases

(preprocessor, compiler, assembler and linker)
are known collectively as the compilation
system.
Preprocessor Phase:
 The preprocessor (cpp) modifies the original C

program according to directives begins with #
character.
For example, #include <stdio.h> command in line 1
of hello.c tells the preprocessor
 To read the contents of the system header file stdio.h
 Insert it directly into the program text.
The result is another C program with .i suffix.
Compilation Phase:
 The compiler (cc1) translates the text file

hello.i into text file hello.s,
Contains an assembly-language program.
Each statement in an assembly-language program
exactly describes one low-level machine-language
instruction to a standard text form.
 Assembly language provides a common output
language for different compilers for different
high-level languages.
C compilers and Fortran compilers both generate
output files in the same assembly language.
Assembly Phase:
 Assembler (as) translates hello.s into

Machine language instructions & packages them
into a relocatable object program
Stores the result in the object file hello.o.
 The hello.o file is a binary file whose bytes
encode machine language instructions rather
than characters.
 File hello.o with a text editor appears as gibberish
(unrecognizable) form text.
Linking Phase:
 The hello program calls the printf function,

Part of the standard C library provided by every C
compiler.
The printf function is a separate pre-compiled object
file called printf.o
That merges with hello.o program. The linker (ld)
handles this merging.
The result is the hello file, which is an executable
object file (executable) that is ready to be loaded
into memory and executed by the system.
How Compilation System Works
 Several factors to understand compilation

system work are:
Optimizing Program Performance
Understanding Link-time errors
Avoiding Security Holes
Optimizing Program Performance:
 Modern compilers are sophisticated tools that

usually produce good code.
Understand inner workings of the compiler in order
to write efficient code.
Performance of C programs by making simple
transformations to the C code that helps the compiler
do its job better.
C compilers store data arrays in memory and how C
programs can exploit this knowledge to run more
efficiently.
Understanding Link-time errors
 Most perplexing programming errors are

related to the operation of the linker, In order
to build large software systems. e.g
Linker cannot resolve a reference
Difference b/w static and global variable
Difference b/w static Library and Global Library
Two global variables in different C files with same
name.
Linker related errors not appear until run time.
Avoiding Security Holes:
 Only few programmers understand careful

restriction of quantity and forms of data they
accept from untrusted sources.
Secure programming is to understand the
consequences of the way data and control
information are stored on the program stack.
Stack Discipline and Buffer overflow can lead to
serious program errors.
e.g array is allocated on the stack to hold a string,
but the size of the string exceeds the space allocated
for the array.

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Chapter-1

 A computer system consists of hardware and

 “hello” program begins life as a source

 Most modern systems represent text characters

 All information in a system—including disk

 As programmers, need to understand machine

 The program that performs four phases

 The preprocessor (cpp) modifies the original C

 The compiler (cc1) translates the text file

 Assembler (as) translates hello.s into

 The hello program calls the printf function,

 Several factors to understand compilation

 Modern compilers are sophisticated tools that

 Most perplexing programming errors are

 Only few programmers understand careful

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