15-123

Systems Skills in C and Unix

About the course
Effective Programming in C and
UNIX
All Semesters: 9 units

This course is designed to provide a substantial exposure to the C programming
language and the Unix programming environment for students with some prior
programming experience but minimal exposure to C.

Features of the C language that are emphasized

arrays, structs and unions, dynamic memory allocation (malloc and free), pointers, pointer
arithmetic, and casting.

Data structures that are emphasized

dynamic lists and hash tables.

Algorithmic efficiency is emphasized

Space and time complexity

Students will develop a sense of proper programming style in the C idiom

be exposed to cross-platform portability issues.

learn to use tools such as emacs/vi, make, gdb to assist them in the design,
testing and debugging programs. learn about regular expressions and will be
able to use scripting languages such as Perl and Shell scripting

This course serves as the prerequisite for 15-213.
Prerequisites: 15-110
Course material
Primary Course Text Books:
All course textbooks are optional. Lecture notes are available from
(1) http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guna/15-123S10/lectures

(2) C Programming Language (2nd Edition) by Brian W. Kernighan (Author), Dennis

Ritchie (Author)

Other Recommended Text Books are:

(3) "C for Java Programmers" by Thomasz Muldner" ISBN: 0-201-70279-7 - Addison
Wesley Longman 2000

(4) ANSI C on UNIX by Paul Wang http://www.sofpower.com/pub_bk01.html

(5) Learning Perl, Fourth Edition by Randal L. Schwartz, Tom Phoenix, brian d foy
Fourth Edition July 2005 http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnperl4/

(6) The UNIX programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/upe/
Course Components

8 programming labs – 40%

skills labs – 7%

Quizzes or Salons – 10%

Written midterm – 10%

C programming midterm – 7%

Script programming midterm – 5%

Final Exam – 20%

TA points – 1%
Course Objectives

At the end of this course

You should be able to write fairly sophisticated C
programs

You should have a good understanding of program
verification, debugging (tools and process)

You should have a good understanding of machine
memory model and how programs work

You should be able to write useful scripts using
languages such as perl and bash

You will have some understanding of how assembler s
work

You should be prepared to go into 15-213
Course Staff

Professor Guna (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guna)

Gates 6005, office hrs – T, TR 10:30-12:00 or by
appointment, or anytime my door is open

Course Assistants

Section A

TBA

Section E

Emily Grove

Section F

Kee Young Lee

Section G

Sylvia Han
How your time should be divided

This is how you should spend your time on any week (9
units)

Attending lecture

3 hours

Recitation

1 hour

Homework and Coding

5 hours

Disclaimer

It is hard to predict how long it will take you to finish your
programming assignment

Talk to the course staff, if it is taking an unusually long time
(20 hour /week)

We will be tracking this time as part of the assignment
Important

Start assignments early – C programming can be very time
consuming

Assignments are individual, do not ask others to write code or
copy others code w/o permission

Sample code given in class can be used in any assignment

Read notes and annotated notes

Do homework

Not graded

Attend lectures and recitations

DO NOT use laptops other than to take notes in class or write
code

Any other activity is prohibited

Seek help early and often
Testing your prior knowledge
What is a function?

A mathematical notion is that a function takes a given
set of inputs and produces one and only one output

Hence for the same set of inputs it must always produce
the same output

Functions can be used in programming to

Divide and conquer

Promote modularity

Unit testing

proof of correctness of the algorithm

Functions have overhead

Change in execution path

Runtime stack use
What is the purpose of the following function?
int f(int n) {
int i = 0, k = 0;
while (k <= n) {
k += i*2 + 1;
i++;
}
return i-1;
}

Write down the assumptions you make about this
function
What is a Loop?

A programming constructs that allows one to repeat a
task

What are the types of loops you know? When do you
use them?

Does a loop always ends? Give an example where a

loop does not end.

Does a loop always execute once? Give an example,

where a loop may never execute.
for loop syntax (revisited)

for (initializations; exit condition; change)

{
/* loop_ body */

}
while loop syntax (new)
v
Initialize conditions

while (condition(s))
{
/* loop body */
Loop condition
v changes
}
When loops go wrong
Loop invariant

A loop invariant is a boolean variable that is true
before, during and just after execution of the loop

Example: What would be a loop invariant for
Proving the Loop invariance

Check the loop invariant

Is it true just before loop execution?

Does it hold during the execution of the loop?

Is it true just after the execution of the loop

What are pre and post conditions for this function?
What are Strings?

String is an array of characters

Characters come from ASCII (8-bit) or Unicode (16-
bit) tables

Memory is a big long String of bytes

In Java

Strings are objects with their own attributes and
operations (methods)

Strings are immutable

Strings are very common in many applications

In C Strings are not objects and is a byte array of
characters ending with NULL character ‘\0’
What are boolean variables?

Boolean variables only takes values TRUE or FALSE

C does not have boolean as a type

Use o for false and 1 for true

Technically we can use a byte to store things

The condition in an if statement is a boolean variable

Boolean variables can be combined using

Logical AND (&&)

Logical OR (||)

Logical NOT (!)

Properties

NOT (A and B) = NOT (A) or NOT(B)

NOT (A or B) = NOT (A) and NOT(B)

Prove these identities
Logic Tables

Source: mathworks
Prove !(A && B) = !A || !B
 Homework:
prove
!(A || B) = !A && !B
Understanding UNIX
Operating Systems
Unix Operating System

Began at AT & T in 1970’s

Free source code for certain groups

Many versions of unix

Linux version

Unix “like” system

Free and open source

Collaborative development

Small kernel
Unix system shell
Accessing unix

http://www.cmu.edu/myandrew

Download and install SSH secure shell

SSH

Provides access to unix.andrew.cmu.edu machines

Using a shell we can perform various tasks

mkdir, cp, quota, mv, …..

We develop and test our C and perl programs

We write shell scripts to make life easy
What is C?

A general purpose programming language

Developed in 1972 at AT &T for use with unix

One of most popular programming languages

High level procedural programming

Direct Access to low memory

C++ is the object oriented extension to C

Popular in industry

STL
Why learn C?

Good

Flexibility

Efficiency

Low level access to memory

Caution

Low level access to memory

Memory access violations (buffer overflows)

Hard to debug C code

Use a debugger such as gdb

Platform dependent
Life of a C program
#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char* argv[]) {
printf(“hello world\n”);
return 0;
}
Life of a C program
Hello.c Hello.i Hello.s
preprocessor C compiler Assembler

Hello.o

Hello

executable Linker
How programs get executed

registers ALU

Main
Bus interface I/O bridge memory

I/O Bus

USB Graphics Disk

controller Adapter HD
controller
Program Development Process

Editing

The process of creating the source code

Compiling

The process of translating source code to object code

Linking

The process of linking all libraries and other object codes to
generate the executable code

Executing

The process of running the program executable

Testing/Debugging

The process of making sure program does what it is supposed
to do

Consider all “edge” cases and make sure code does not break
for some inputs
The C compiler – gcc

GNU C compiler

Compiles, assemble and produce executable code

Also can compile

C++, Modula-3, FORTRAN, Objective-C, …

Examples

gcc hello.c
a.out

gcc –c hello.c
hello.o

gcc -S hello.c
hello.s

Using various flags

gcc –std=c99 hello.c

gcc –Wall –pedantic –ansi –O2 program.c
ANSI C

Standard published by

American National Standards institute for C language

Some ANSI features

Do not mix data and code

Do not use functions that are not part of the standard
libraries
Moving from Java to C

From object oriented thinking to procedural thinking

From classes and methods to functions/procedures

From object oriented decomposition to procedural
decomposition

From a relatively “safe” high level language to fairly low level
“unsafe” language

From no direct access to memory (Java) to direct manipulation
of memory.

Automatic garbage collection to no garbage collection (clean up)
Code Examples
Data Representations
Data representations

int x = 15;

Decimal representation of 15

int x = 0x0F;

Hexadecimal (base-16) representation of 15

15 = 0000 … 0000 1111

Binary representation of 15

Typically integers are 32-bits

Most significant bit is the sign bit (1-negative, 0-positive)

What is the largest signed integer that can be represented by
32-bits?

What is the largest unsigned int?

More about this in skills lab 1 and in lecture 02
Things to do before next class

Take the background survey from Bb->course
information

Login to salon and complete the prior knowledge
assignment

After you complete, go back to assignment view mode
and select up to 3 responses that you like from global
questions

Make your self familiar with course websites

Bb and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~guna/15-123S11

Go to recitation tomorrow
Next: more on Representation of
data