C Tutorials

51. UNIX read and write system calls sample program in C

By: Tamil Selvan : 2007-09-26

Description: Input and output uses the read and write system calls, which are accessed from C programs through two functions called read and write. For both, the first argument is a file descriptor. The second argument is a character array in your program where the data is to go to or to come from. The third argument is the number is the number of bytes to be transferred.


52. Open, Creat, Close, Unlink system calls sample program in C

By: Abinaya : 2007-09-26

Description: Other than the default standard input, output and error, you must explicitly open files in order to read or write them. There are two system calls for this, open and creat [sic].


53. lseek() sample program in C

By: Baski : 2007-09-26

Description: Input and output are normally sequential: each read or write takes place at a position in the file right after the previous one. When necessary, however, a file can be read or written in any arbitrary order. The system call lseek provides a way to move around in a file without reading or writing any data:


54. Tutorial on Complicated Declarations in C

By: Fazal : 2007-09-22

Description: C is sometimes castigated for the syntax of its declarations, particularly ones that involve pointers to functions. The syntax is an attempt to make the declaration and the use agree; it works well for simple cases, but it can be confusing for the harder ones, because declarations cannot be read left to right, and because parentheses are over-used.


55. Basics of Structures in C

By: Grenfel : 2007-09-22

Description: The keyword struct introduces a structure declaration, which is a list of declarations enclosed in braces. An optional name called a structure tag may follow the word struct (as with point here). The tag names this kind of structure, and can be used subsequently as a shorthand for the part of the declaration in braces.


56. Pointers to Functions example in C

By: Emiley J : 2007-09-22

Description: In C, a function itself is not a variable, but it is possible to define pointers to functions, which can be assigned, placed in arrays, passed to functions, returned by functions, and so on. We will illustrate this by modifying the sorting procedure written earlier in this chapter so that if the optional argument -n is given, it will sort the input lines numerically instead of lexicographically.


57. A C program similar to grep command in UNIX

By: Abinaya : 2007-09-22

Description: Let us design and write a program to print each line of its input that contains a particular ``pattern'' or string of characters. (This is a special case of the UNIX program grep.) For example, searching for the pattern of letters ``ould'' in the set of lines


58. Functions returning non-integer values in C

By: Baski : 2007-09-22

Description: Many numerical functions like sqrt, sin, and cos return double; other specialized functions return other types than int. To illustrate how to deal with this, let us write and use the function atof(s), which converts the string s to its double-precision floating-point equivalent. It handles an optional sign and decimal point, and the presence or absence of either part or fractional part. Our version is not a high-quality input conversion routine; that would take more space than we care to use. The standard library includes an atof; the header declares it.


59. getch and ungetch in C

By: Charles : 2007-09-22

Description: What are getch and ungetch? It is often the case that a program cannot determine that it has read enough input until it has read too much. One instance is collecting characters that make up a number: until the first non-digit is seen, the number is not complete. But then the program has read one character too far, a character that it is not prepared for.


60. Example Calculator program in C - describing use of External Variables in C

By: Daniel Malcolm : 2007-09-22

Description: A C program consists of a set of external objects, which are either variables or functions. The adjective ``external'' is used in contrast to ``internal'', which describes the arguments and variables defined inside functions. External variables are defined outside of any function, and are thus potentially available to many functions. Functions themselves are always external, because C does not allow functions to be defined inside other functions. By default, external variables and functions have the property that all references to them by the same name, even from functions compiled separately, are references to the same thing. (The standard calls this property external linkage.) In this sense, external variables are analogous to Fortran COMMON blocks or variables in the outermost block in Pascal. We will see later how to define external variables and functions that are visible only within a single source file. Because external variables are globally accessible, they provide an alternative to function arguments and return values for communicating data between functions. Any function may access an external variable by referring to it by name, if the name has been declared somehow.