A basic C language process is passing a value to a function. If you’re an old hand, you might say, “Yeah, well, so?” For a beginning programmer, however, functions and their arguments can be a confusing and intimidating ordeal.
Continue reading
When you first learn the C language, and you’re practicing basic input/output, you become familiar with the two I/O workhorses of the C library: printf() and scanf(). Of the two, printf() is my favorite. The scanf() function is highly useful, and it’s a great learning tool, but it’s not the best function for reading in a string of text.
Continue reading
You might think that the command line is a relic of the past. For a mortal user, that’s correct: The only people I know who still dwell at the command prompt are power users. I keep a command prompt (terminal) window open on my computers, just because using the terminal is fast and I happen to know the commands. Yet, internally, all graphical operating systems still reference the command line.
Continue reading
A few Lessons ago, I mentioned that a variable such as **months couldn’t be used to declare an array. That’s true because the **months construction doesn’t use array notation. Duh. That doesn’t mean that **months is totally out of luck.
Continue reading
As programmer, you have a choice: You can manipulate information as it’s sent to output or you can manipulate it in memory and then send the result to output. Depending on what the program does, however, you may not have that luxury. Sometimes you must make modifications in memory, saving them for later.
Continue reading
The C language lacks a sack of tools for manipulating strings. For most string-mangling operations, you’re pretty much left to carve out your own tools. Doing so may involve pointers, but it doesn’t necessarily have to.
Continue reading
Something that you can do in the C language that C++ programmers cannot is employ the shift operators. These operators, << and >>, serve as I/O operators in C++. In C, however, they can be used to manipulate values at the bit level in C, which is part of the C language’s mid-level heritage.
Continue reading
It’s pretty safe to avoid your first instinct when it comes to dividing two integers. That first instinct is most likely to typecast the int values as float. That works, and many times it can be the best solution, but it’s not always the solution.
Continue reading
The unary * operator is used both to declare a pointer and access the value at that pointer’s location. When the value is the address of another pointer, two * unary operators are used. When the value is the address of an address of an address of an address, then four * unary operators are used. I kid you not.
Continue reading
The pointer-to-a-pointer variable does have a purpose, but fortunately it’s a very specific and rare purpose. And, no, that purpose isn’t to make you wish you had learned to program in Java.
Continue reading