Practical C Programming for Engineers (PC243)

SynopsisC is the programming language of choice for many PC and embedded applications, and will be the dominant language for the foreseeable future. This intensive course covers basic to advanced C concepts with a strong focus on engineering problems. Participants would, in addition, be taught structured programming for system reliability and efficient coding styles.

Course Highlight
Participants will have practical experiences using the gcc compiler toolset for cross compilation.

What previous participants say about this course
Answers to the question 'what did you like most about the course'

• "Learn how to program good programming way." - 29 Jan 10
• "It is good to cover from A-Z by theory." - 29 Jan 10
• "The instructor gave us the examples which are useful in solving our assignments." - 29 Jan 10
• "The assignment and instructor personal guidance." - 29 Jan 10
• "Solve assignment given." - 29 Jan 10

What You Will LearnParticipants will be taught the following topics of structured C programming:

• Data types and operators
• Flow control
• Functions
• Arrays and structures
• Pointers
• Characters and strings
• Standard input/output
• C preprocessors

Developmental methodologies for engineering applications, such as state machines, state transition diagrams, and modularisation, would be taught throughout the course.

Who Should AttendThis course is particularly suited for engineers with rudimentary C programming knowledge who would like/required to develop reliable and efficient applications in C.

PrerequisiteParticipants should have rudimentary programming experience and a good command of English.

Course MethodologyThis course is presented in a workshop style with example-led lectures interlaced with hands-on practical for maximum understanding.

Course Duration3 days, 9am - 5pm

Course StructureDay 1

• Introduction: history of C
• Data types and operators: variables, type casting, const qualifier, typedef, arithmetic, assignment, equality, relational, increment, decrement, logical
• Flow control: if...else statement, switch statement, break and continue statements, while statement, do...while statement, for statement
• Functions: definition, prototype, passing arguments by value, storage classes, scope rules, recursion, standard library function
• Software development: from requirement to flowcharts, STD and ASM

Day 2

• Arrays and structures: array definition, storage, multi-dimensional arrays, structure definition, accessing structure members, unions, bitwise operators, bit fields
• Pointers: definition and initialization, pointer expressions, pointer arithmetic, passing arguments to functions, const qualifier, pointers and arrays, function pointers
• Characters and strings: fundamental of strings and characters, character functions, string functions

Day 3

• Inputs and outputs: printing numbers, printing strings and characters, formatting output, reading input, file types, accessing sequential files, accessing random-access files
• C preprocessors: #include preprocessor, #define preprocessor, conditional compilation
• Modularisation: coding for reliability and reuse