Target Audience

The course is aimed at developers' not familiar C program development. This course covers all aspects of Programming with C. The course teaches the design, writing and testing of C programs. Many exercises are performed by the developer to ensure that the statements taught are fully understood and practical experience is gained.

Pre-requisites

Knowledge of the host environment is required (either z/OS or Windows).

Course Objectives

Whilst covering the basics of C programming and how it is used, this course also aims to give an insight into structuring C programs, C verbs, manipulating data,using functions and testing C programs. On completion of this course the student will be able to:

•     Develop Structured C Programs
•     Understand and Use C Verbs
•     Develop C programs using the available verbs
•     Develop and use C Functions
•     Develop and Test C programs accessing different types of files

Course Environment

•     IBM Mainframe
•     Visual C++ running on a Windows platform

Course Details

GETTING STARTED

What Is C?

Program Example

Commencing A Program - Include

C Functions

Comments

Variable Declaration

Coding C Statements

Compiling And Linking

Running The Program

VARIABLES, DATA TYPES AND CONSTANTS

Declaration Of Variables

Reserved Words

Variable Declaration

Data Types

Unsigned Data Types

Global And Local Variables

Variable Initialisation - The Static Keyword

Assigning Values To Variables

Working With Characters

Special Escape Characters

Working With Floating Point Numbers

Specifying Numeric Values

Constants

Setting Up Symbolic Constants - The #Define Statement

EXPRESSIONS, ASSIGNMENTS AND OPERATORS

Operator Introduction

Operators

Arithmetic Operators

Postfix And Prefix Unary Operators

Bitwise Operators

Assignment Operators

Expressions

Data Type Conversion In Assignments

Casting

Relational Operators

Conditional Operators

The Tertiary Operator

Summary Example

CONTROL AND FLOW

Control Flow Statements

The If Statement

Nested If Statements

The Switch Statement

The While Statement

The Do While Statement

The For Statement

Nested Loops

Unconditional / Endless Loops

The Break Statement

The Continue Statement

The Goto Statement

Conditional Expressions

The Comma Operator

FUNCTIONS

Overview

Internal Functions

Function Prototypes

Passing Arguments To Functions

Returning Arguments From Functions - Return

Global And Local Variables - Variable Scope

'Call By Value' Function Invocation

Storage Classes

'Call By Reference' Function Invocation

Calling External Functions

Passing Arguments To The Main Function

ARRAYS / STRINGS

Basic Data Types

Array Definition

Array Initialisation

Accessing Array Elements

Array Operations

Arrays With Functions

Using Arrays As Arguments

Character Strings

String Literals / Manipulation

Character String Comparisons

Multi - Dimensional Arrays

STRUCTURES AND UNIONS

Structure Definition

Accessing Members Using A Variable

Structure Level Operations

Structure Lengths

Using Typedef To Provide A Type Alias

Nesting Data Structures

Structure Arrays

Using Structures With Functions

Unions

ADDRESSES AND POINTERS

Declaring Pointers

Examples Of Pointer Manipulation

Pointer Manipulation

Pointers To Pointers

Passing Pointers To Functions

Returning Pointers From Functions

Pointers And Arrays

Pointer Comparison

Using Pointers To Pass Arrays To Functions

Dynamic Memory Allocation

Pointers And Structures

Pointers To Structure Arrays

Pointer Conversion

Linked Lists

THE PREPROCESSOR

Pre-Processor Directives

The #Define Directive

#Define Macros

The #Include Statement

The #If Statement

The #Ifdef Statement

DATA INPUT / OUTPUT

Data Input / Output

Standard I/O Streams

File Access

The File Handle Statement

File Open And Close

Reading And Writing To A File

Fscanf

Fprintf

Fgets

Fputs

Fread

Fwrite

Getc And Putc (or Fgetc and Fputc)

Redirection Of Input / Output

System File Pointers

Rewinding A File

Direct Access / Updating Records

File Positioning - Fseek

Ftell - Determining the Current Position

C SUPPLIED FUNCTIONS

Writing To The Terminal - Printf

Printf Conversion Specifications

Reading Data From The Terminal - Scanf

Scanf Conversion Specifications

Using Scanf to Split at a Given Character

Using Scanf to Read Until a Given Character is Found

Scanf Problems When Receiving Unexpected Data

The Getchar Function

The Putchar Function

The Sizeof Function

The Malloc Function

The Toupper / Tolower Functions

Date And Time Functions - Time / Localtime

The Strftime Function

The Asctime Function

STRING FUNCTIONS

The Gets Function

The Puts Function

The Sprintf Function

The Sscanf Function

The Strcat Function

The Strchr Function

The Strcmp Function

The Strcpy Function

The Strcspn Function

The Strlen Function

The Strncat Function

The Strncmp Function

The Strncpy Function

The Strpbrk Function

The Strrchr Function

The Strspn Function

The Strstr Function

Character String Data Conversion

Course Format

Practical sessions make up a large part of the course, allowing delegates to demonstrate and reinforce the lectures given. During these sessions the delegate will gain experience of writing and testing different types of C programs using the various C verbs available. Examples are used extensively, ranging from simple code snippets to full applications with complete ‘real world’ functionality. These are supplied at the start of the course and it is encouraged that the delegates execute and ‘experiment’ with these under the instructor’s guidance as they are introduced. These examples are available to take away, along with the delegate’s own work. The comprehensive Student Guide supplied is fully indexed serving as a useful reference tool long after the course has finished. Delegates will also be able to access a free help-line with technical questions relating to topics covered on the course.