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Introduction to the C Programming Language

Welcome to your first C lab!

The two main goals of this sprint are as follows. The first goal is to give students the experience of learning a different programming language. This is important because it is very rarely the case where you are familiar and comfortable with all of the technologies/programming languages that you'll be using on a job as a professional developer. Being able to pick up languages/technologies you aren't familiar with is a skill that we want to cultivate in students during their time here at Lambda, which is why we expose students to both C and Python during their time here.

The second goal is to start peeling away the layers of abstraction that students are used to from working with JavaScript and Python. Indeed, when you boil it all down, both JavaScript and Python are implemented in C in the first place! C supports very few of the abstractions that students are used to, because C has you working directly with the memory on your machine. Higher level languages abstract this fact away from you, at the cost of raw performance and control. Essentially, you're getting exposed to the nitty-gritty seedy underbelly of your computer's inner workings, and being in such a place for extended periods of time is not for everybody.

That being said, we the instructors do believe that every developer needs to get a taste of C in order to really be able to delve into the inner workings of how exactly software communicates and interfaces with hardware. That's not really something JavaScript or Python will expose you to. Additionally, once you get acclimated to C, the language provides you with unparalleled control over how your code gets executed on your machine. Some people find the sheer amount of control that C provides you intoxicating.

But before any of that happens, you've gotta get your feet wet with C. So without further ado, let's get started!

What you'll be doing in this lab

If you haven't gotten your C compiler up and running, please do that first. You'll find instructions on how to do that for your specific platform here: https://github.com/LambdaSchool/CS-Wiki/wiki/Getting-Your-C-Compiler-Installed.

This lab is structured very much like how your introductory JavaScript labs are structured. There are independent modules, each with their own set of exercises that you'll be tasked with implementing. There's an associated set of tests for all the exercises in each module, which you'll run against your code to check to see if it behaves and functions correctly. The order in which you should tackle these exercises is this:

  • fizzbuzz
  • strings
  • pointers
  • quicksort
  • malloc
  • structs
  • queue
  • [Stretch Goal] hangman

Inside a module directory, type make tests (just like with the npm install command needing a package.json file, the make command requires a Makefile), which will do a couple of things as specified by the Makefile. These include compiling your source code inside that module, linking all of the included header files and libraries, and running the tests for that module. Once you've gotten all of the tests to pass for that module, move on to the next one.

The code inside the main functions are for if you want to compile your file into an executable for debugging purposes. You don't need to edit any of the code in the main functions. Just type make to compile an executable. Then type ./NAME_OF_EXECUTABLE (not in caps) to run it, which will execute the code inside that program's main function.

Note for Windows Users

If you see this error:

Running unit tests:
: not foundtests.sh: 2: ./tests/runtests.sh:
./tests/runtests.sh: 4: ./tests/runtests.sh: Syntax error: word unexpected (expecting "do")

You have two options:

  1. Open the file tests/runtests.sh in VS Code in whatever subproject folder you’re working in, e.g. fizzbuzz. Click on the lower right of the screen where it says CRLF. Choose LF. Save the file. Then the error should go away.

  2. You can do this from the command line with the tr command:

cd tests
cat runtests.sh | tr -d '\r' > runtests.tmp
mv runtests.tmp runtests.sh

The root of the problem is a setting in git that causes all newlines (LF) to be converted to carriage-return/newline (CRLF). The script runtests.sh is a bash script that bash runs, and bash hates \r and pukes everywhere.

To cause git to not do newline conversion for future clones, run the following:

git config --global core.autocrlf false