BIT Notes

Chapter 2
By Karna Bahadur Shrestha

Prepared By: Karna Bahadur Shrestha

Character Set
The set of characters that are used to form words, numbers and expression in C is called C
character set. The characters in C are grouped into the following categories.
 Letters or alphabets(a-z A-Z)
 Digits(0-9)
 Whitespaces
o Blank spaces
o Horizontal tab
o Vertical tab
o Carriage return

Special Characters

, Comma & Ampersand

. Period ^ Caret
; Semicolon * Asterisk
: Colon - Minus Sign
? Question Mark + Plus Sign
' Aphostrophe < Opening Angle (Less than sign)
" Quotation Marks > Closing Angle (Greater than sign)
! Exclaimation Mark ( Left Parenthesis
| Vertical Bar ) Right Parenthesis
/ Slash [ Left Bracket
\ Backslash ] Right Bracket
~ Tilde { Left Brace
- Underscore } Right Bracket
$ Dollar Sign # .Number Sign
% Percentage Sign

Keywords and Identifiers

Every word in C language is a keyword or an identifier. Keywords in C language cannot be used as a
variable name. They are specifically used by the compiler for its own purpose and they serve
as building blocks of a c program.
The following are the Keyword set of C language.
auto else register union
break enum return unsigned
case extern short void
char float signed volatile
const for size of while

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 continue goto static
default if struct
do int switch
double long typedef

Some compilers may have additional keywords listed in C manual.

Identifier refers to the name of user-defined variables, array and functions. A variable should
be essentially a sequence of letters and or digits and the variable name should begin with a
character.

Both uppercase and lowercase letters are permitted. The underscore character is also
permitted in identifiers.
The identifiers must conform to the following rules.

1. First character must be an alphabet (or underscore)

2. Identifier names must consists of only letters, digits and underscore.
3. An identifier name should have less than 31 characters.
4. Any standard C language keyword cannot be used as a variable name.
5. An identifier should not contain a space.

Constants/Literals
A constant value is the one which does not change during the execution of a program. C supports
several types of constants.

1. Integer Constants
2. Real Constants
3. Single Character Constants
4. String Constants

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Integer Constants
An integer constant is a sequence of digits. There are 3 types of integer‟s namely decimal
integer, octal integers and hexadecimal integer.

Decimal Integers: consists of a set of digits 0 to 9 preceded by an optional + or - sign. Spaces,

commas and non digit characters are not permitted between digits. Examples for valid decimal
integer constants are:
123
-31
0
562321
+78

Some examples for invalid integer constants are:

15 750
20,00
0 Rs.
1000
Octal Integers: constant consists of any combination of digits from 0 through 7 with an O at the
beginning. Some examples of octal integers are:

O26
O
O347
O676

Hexadecimal integer: constant is preceded by OX or Ox, they may contain alphabets from A to F
or a to f. The alphabets A to F refer to 10 to 15 in decimal digits. Examples of valid hexadecimal
integers are:
OX2
OX8C
OXbcd
Ox

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Real Constants
Real Constants consists of a fractional part in their representation. Integer constants are
inadequate to represent quantities that vary continuously. These quantities are represented by
numbers containing fractional parts like 26.082. Examples of real constants are:
0.0026
-0.97
435.29
+487.0

Real Numbers can also be represented by exponential notation. The general form for
exponential notation is mantissa exponent. The mantissa is either a real number expressed in
decimal notation or an integer. The exponent is an integer number with an optional plus or
minus sign.
+3.2e5 [+3.2x105]
4.1e8 [4.1x108]

A Single Character constant represent a single character which is enclosed in a pair of quotation
symbols.
Example for character constants are:
'5'
'x'
';'
''
All character constants have an equivalent integer value which is called ASCII Values.

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String Constants
A string constant is a set of characters enclosed in double quotation marks. The characters in a
string constant sequence may be an alphabet, number, special character and blank space.
Example of string constants are
"BSCCSIT"
"1234"
"God Bless"
"!.....?"

Backslash Character Constants [Escape Sequences]

Backslash character constants are special characters used in output functions. Although they
contain two characters they represent only one character. Given below is the table of escape
sequence and their meanings.

Constant Meaning
'\a' Audible Alert (Bell)
'\b' Backspace
'\f' Formfeed
'\n' New Line
'\r' Carriage Return
'\t' Horizontal tab
'\v' Vertical Tab
'\'' Single Quote
'\"' Double Quote
'\?' Question Mark
'\\' Back Slash
'\0' Null

Variables
A variable is a value that can change any time. It is a memory location used to store a data
value. A variable name should be carefully chosen by the programmer so that its use is reflected
in a useful way in the entire program. Variable names are case sensitive. Examples of variable
names are

Sun
number
Salary
Emp_name
average1

Any variable declared in a program should confirm to the following:

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 1. They must always begin with a letter, although some systems permit underscore as the first
character.
2. The length of a variable must not be more than 8 characters.
3. White space is not allowed and
4. A variable should not be a Keyword
5. It should not contain any special characters.

Examples of Invalid Variable names are:

123
(area)
6th
%abc

Data Types in C
A C language programmer has to tell the system before-hand, the type of numbers or characters
he is using in his program. These are data types. There are many data types in C language. A
C programmer has to use appropriate data type as per his requirement in the program he is
going to do.
There are basic three categories:
o Primary Data types
o User defined Data types
o Derived Data types

Primary data type

All C Compilers accept the following fundamental data types

1. Integer int
2. Character char
3. Floating Point float
4. Double precision floating point double
5. Void void

Integer Type
Integers are whole numbers with a machine dependent range of values. A good programming
language as to support the programmer by giving a control on a range of numbers and storage
space. C has 3 classes of integer storage namely short int, int and long int. All of these data types
have signed and unsigned forms. A short int requires half the space than normal integer values.
Unsigned numbers are always positive and consume all the bits for the magnitude of the number.
The long and unsigned integers are used to declare a longer range of values.

Floating Point Types

Floating point number represents a real number with 6 digits precision. Floating point numbers
are denoted by the keyword float. When the accuracy of the floating point number is
insufficient, we can use the double to define the number. The double is same as float but with

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 longer precision. To extend the precision further we can use long double which consumes 80
bits of memory space.

Void Type
Using void data type, we can specify the type of a function. It is a good practice to avoid
functions that does not return any values to the calling function.

Character Type
A single character can be defined as a defined as a character type of data. Characters are usually
stored in 8 bits of internal storage. The qualifier signed or unsigned can be explicitly applied
to char. While unsigned characters have values between 0 and 255, signed characters have
values from –128 to 127.

Size and Range of Data Types on 16 bit

machine;

TYPE SIZE (bytes) Range Format Specifier

Char or Signed Char 1 -128 to 127 %c

Unsigned Char 1 0 to 255 %c

Int or Signed int 2 -32768 to 32767 %d

Unsigned int 2 0 to 65535 %u

Short int or Signed short int 2 -128 to 127 %d or %i

Unsigned short int 2 0 to 255 %u

-2147483648 to %ld
Long int or signed long int 4 2147483647

Unsigned long int 4 0 to 4294967295 %lu

Float 4 3.4 e-38 to 3.4 e+38 %f

Double 8 1.7e-308 to 1.7e+308 %lf

Long Double 10 3.4 e-4932 to 3.4 e+4932 %Lf

Declaration of Variables
Every variable used in the program should be declared to the compiler. The declaration does two
things.

1. Tells the compiler the variables name.

2. Specifies what type of data the variable will hold.

The general format of any declaration

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data-type variable_name1,variable_name2,……..,variable_name_n;
Where variable_name1, variable_name2, variable_name3 are variable names. Variables are
separated by commas. A declaration statement must end with a semicolon.

Example:

int sum;
int number, salary;
double average, mean;

Datatype Keyword Equivalent

Character char

Unsigned Character unsigned char

Signed Character signed char

Signed Integer signed int (or) int

Signed Short Integer signed short int (or) short int (or) short

Signed Long Integer signed long int (or) long int (or) long

UnSigned Integer unsigned int (or) unsigned

UnSigned Short Integer unsigned short int (or) unsigned short

UnSigned Long Integer unsigned long int (or) unsigned long

Floating Point float

Double Precision Floating Point double

Extended Double Precision Floating Point long double

User defined type declaration

In C language a user can define an identifier that represents an existing data type. The
user defined datatype identifier can later be used to declare variables. The general
syntax is

typedef type identifier;

Here type represents existing data type and „identifier‟ refers to the „row‟ name given to the
data type.

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 typedef int integer;
Here integer symbolizes int data type, Now we can declare int variable “a ” as integer a instead if int
a (but int a) is still valid.

Derived datatypes
There are some datatypes which are derived from the existing primary data types.
struct st{
int a;
float b;
char c;
}

Delimeters
A delimiter is one or more characters that separate text strings. Common delimiters are commas
(,), semicolon (;), quotes ( ", ' ), braces ({}), pipes (|), or slashes ( / \ ).

Expressions
An expression in C is defined as 2 or more operands are connected by one operator and which
can also be said to a formula to perform any operation. An operand is a function reference, an
array element, a variable, or any constant. An operator is symbols like “+”, “-“, “/”, “*” etc.
Let’s observe this example:
A*B
In the above expression multiplication symbol (*) is said to be an operator and A and B are said
to be 2 operands.

Comments
Comments in C language are used to provide information about lines of code. It is widely used
for documenting code. There are 2 types of comments in the C language.

1. Single Line Comments

2. Multi-Line Comments

Single line comments are represented by double slash //. Let's see an example of a single line
comment in C.

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Multi-Line comments are represented by slash asterisk \* ... *\. It can occupy many lines of code,
but it can't be nested. Syntax:

/*
code
to be commented
*/

C tokens
The basic elements recognized by the C compiler are the tokens. A token in source program text
that the compiler does not breakdown into component elements. The keywords, identifiers,

Tokens in C is the most important element to be used in creating a program in C. We can define the token as the
smallest individual element in C. For `example, we cannot create a sentence without using words; similarly, we
cannot create a program in C without using tokens in C. Therefore, we can say that tokens in C is the building
block or the basic component for creating a program in C language.

Classification of tokens in C

https://www.javatpoint.com/tokens-in-c

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Prepared By: Karna Bahadur Shrestha