A Quick C Tutorial

Most C programs consist of function definitions and data structures. Here is a simple C program that defines a single function, called main.

void main()
{
    printf("Hello, world!\n");
}

All functions must have a return type. Since main does not return a value, it uses void, the null type, as its return type. Other types include integers (int) and floating point numbers (float). This function declaration information must precede each function definition.

Immediately following the function declaration is the function's name (in this case, main). Next, in parentheses, are any arguments (or inputs) to the function. main has none, but a empty set of parentheses is still required.

After the function arguments is an open curly-brace {. This signifies the start of the actual function code. Curly-braces signify program blocks, or chunks of code.

Next comes a series of C statements. Statements demand that some action be taken. Our demonstration program has a single statement, a printf (formatted print). This will print the message "Hello, world!" to the LCD display. The \n indicates end-of-line.

The printf statement ends with a semicolon (;). All C statements must be ended by a semicolon. Beginning C programmers commonly make the error of omitting the semicolon that is required at the end of each statement.

The main function is ended by the close curly-brace {.

Let's look at an another example to learn some more features of C. The following code defines the function square, which returns the mathematical square of a number.

int square(int n)
{
    return(n * n);
}

The function is declared as type int, which means that it will return an integer value. Next comes the function name square, followed by its argument list in parentheses. square has one argument, n, which is an integer. Notice how declaring the type of the argument is done similarly to declaring the type of the function.

When a function has arguments declared, those argument variables are valid within the "scope" of the function (i.e., they only have meaning within the function's own code). Other functions may use the same variable names independently.

The code for square is contained within the set of curly braces. In fact, it consists of a single statement: the return statement. The return statement exits the function and returns the value of the C expression that follows it (in this case "n * n").

Expressions are evaluated according set of precendence rules depending on the various operations within the expression. In this case, there is only one operation (multiplication), signified by the "*", so precedence is not an issue.

Let's look at an example of a function that performs a function call to the square program.

float hypotenuse(int a, int b)
{
    float h;

    h = sqrt((float)(square(a) + square(b)));

    return(h);
}

This code demonstrates several more features of C. First, notice that the floating point variable h is defined at the beginning of the hypotenuse function. In general, whenever a new program block (indicated by a set of curly braces) is begun, new local variables may be defined.

The value of h is set to the result of a call to the sqrt function. It turns out that sqrt is a built-in function that takes a floating point number as its argument.

We want to use the square function we defined earlier, which returns its result as an integer. But the sqrt function requires a floating point argument. We get around this type incompatibility by coercing the integer sum (square(a) + square(b)) into a float by preceding it with the desired type, in parentheses. Thus, the integer sum is made into a floating point number and passed along to sqrt.

The hypotenuse function finishes by returning the value of h.

This concludes the brief C tutorial.