Chapter 6. The C Programming Language

• Overview of the C programming language
  • A brief history of C
  • Resources for C
  • Conventions for the course:
  • Comparing C to Fortran and Python:
  • A simple example, and how to use gcc:
  • Primitive data types
  • Arithmetic and operators in C
  • Statements and control flow
  • A brief aside on printf
  • Functions
  • Arrays (static and VLA)
• Translation units
  • Header only version
  • Header/source file pair
• Structures and custom data types
  • A full example
• Pointers, Dynamic memory, and Segmentation faults
  • Reference and dereference operators
  • Passing by reference
  • Pointer arithmetic and arrays
  • Pointers to structs
  • Dynamic memory
  • A full example
• The C preprocessor and Macros
  • Preprocessor Macros
• Strings
  • Functions acting on strings
  • Writing formatted strings
  • Reading from strings
• File input and output
  • Formatted input/output
  • Reading whole lines from a file
  • Putting it all together
• Linking against libraries
  • A few useful libraries
  • Creating your own (static) libraries
• An example program: Finite element method for Poisson’s equation
  • The finite element, super brief version
  • The main file:
  • The SparseMat files:
  • The mesh files:
  • The FE matrix files:
  • Wrapping up