C Notes For Professionals. 300+ pages of professional hints and tricks

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Content list About Chapter 1: Getting started with C Language Section 1.1: Hello World Section 1.2: Original "Hello, World!" in K&R C Chapter 2: Comments Section 2.1: Commenting using the preprocessor Section 2.2: /* */ delimited comments Section 2.3: // delimited comments Section 2.4: Possible pitfall due to trigraphs Chapter 3: Data Types Section 3.1: Interpreting Declarations Section 3.2: Fixed Width Integer Types (since C99) Section 3.3: Integer types and constants Section 3.4: Floating Point Constants Section 3.5: String Literals Chapter 4: Operators Section 4.1: Relational Operators Section 4.2: Conditional Operator/Ternary Operator Section 4.3: Bitwise Operators Section 4.4: Short circuit behavior of logical operators Section 4.5: Comma Operator Section 4.6: Arithmetic Operators Section 4.7: Access Operators Section 4.8: sizeof Operator Section 4.9: Cast Operator Section 4.10: Function Call Operator Section 4.11: Increment / Decrement Section 4.12: Assignment Operators Section 4.13: Logical Operators Section 4.14: Pointer Arithmetic Section 4.15: _Alignof Chapter 5: Boolean Section 5.1: Using stdbool.h Section 5.2: Using #define Section 5.3: Using the Intrinsic (built-in) Type _Bool Section 5.4: Integers and pointers in Boolean expressions Section 5.5: Defining a bool type using typedef Chapter 6: Strings Section 6.1: Tokenisation: strtok(), strtok_r() and strtok_s() Section 6.2: String literals Section 6.3: Calculate the Length: strlen() Section 6.4: Basic introduction to strings Section 6.5: Copying strings Section 6.6: Iterating Over the Characters in a String Section 6.7: Creating Arrays of Strings Section 6.8: Convert Strings to Number: atoi(), atof() (dangerous, don't use them) Section 6.9: string formatted data read/write Section 6.10: Find first/last occurrence of a specific character: strchr(), strrchr() Section 6.11: Copy and Concatenation: strcpy(), strcat() Section 6.12: Comparsion: strcmp(), strncmp(), strcasecmp(), strncasecmp() Section 6.13: Safely convert Strings to Number: strtoX functions Section 6.14: strspn and strcspn Chapter 7: Literals for numbers, characters and strings Section 7.1: Floating point literals Section 7.2: String literals Section 7.3: Character literals Section 7.4: Integer literals Chapter 8: Compound Literals Section 8.1: Definition/Initialisation of Compound Literals Chapter 9: Bit-fields Section 9.1: Bit-fields Section 9.2: Using bit-fields as small integers Section 9.3: Bit-field alignment Section 9.4: Don'ts for bit-fields Section 9.5: When are bit-fields useful? Chapter 10: Arrays Section 10.1: Declaring and initializing an array Section 10.2: Iterating through an array eciently and row-major order Section 10.3: Array length Section 10.4: Passing multidimensional arrays to a function Section 10.5: Multi-dimensional arrays Section 10.6: Define array and access array element Section 10.7: Clearing array contents (zeroing) Section 10.8: Setting values in arrays Section 10.9: Allocate and zero-initialize an array with user defined size Section 10.10: Iterating through an array using pointers Chapter 11: Linked lists Section 11.1: A doubly linked list Section 11.2: Reversing a linked list Section 11.3: Inserting a node at the nth position Section 11.4: Inserting a node at the beginning of a singly linked list Chapter 12: Enumerations Section 12.1: Simple Enumeration Section 12.2: enumeration constant without typename Section 12.3: Enumeration with duplicate value Section 12.4: Typedef enum Chapter 13: Structs Section 13.1: Flexible Array Members Section 13.2: Typedef Structs Section 13.3: Pointers to structs Section 13.4: Passing structs to functions Section 13.5: Object-based programming using structs Section 13.6: Simple data structures Chapter 14: Standard Math Section 14.1: Power functions - pow(), powf(), powl() Section 14.2: Double precision floating-point remainder: fmod() Section 14.3: Single precision and long double precision floating-point remainder: fmodf(), fmodl() Chapter 15: Iteration Statements/Loops: for, while, do-while Section 15.1: For loop Section 15.2: Loop Unrolling and Du's Device Section 15.3: While loop Section 15.4: Do-While loop Section 15.5: Structure and flow of control in a for loop Section 15.6: Infinite Loops Chapter 16: Selection Statements Section 16.1: if () Statements Section 16.2: Nested if()...else VS if()..else Ladder Section 16.3: switch () Statements Section 16.4: if () ... else statements and syntax Section 16.5: if()...else Ladder Chaining two or more if () ... else statements Chapter 17: Initialization Section 17.1: Initialization of Variables in C Section 17.2: Using designated initializers Section 17.3: Initializing structures and arrays of structures Chapter 18: Declaration vs Definition Section 18.1: Understanding Declaration and Definition Chapter 19: Command-line arguments Section 19.1: Print the arguments to a program and convert to integer values Section 19.2: Printing the command line arguments Section 19.3: Using GNU getopt tools Chapter 20: Files and I/O streams Section 20.1: Open and write to file Section 20.2: Run process Section 20.3: fprintf Section 20.4: Get lines from a file using getline() Section 20.5: fscanf() Section 20.6: Read lines from a file Section 20.7: Open and write to a binary file Chapter 21: Formatted Input/Output Section 21.1: Conversion Specifiers for printing Section 21.2: The printf() Function Section 21.3: Printing format flags Section 21.4: Printing the Value of a Pointer to an Object Section 21.5: Printing the Dierence of the Values of two Pointers to an Object Section 21.6: Length modifiers Chapter 22: Pointers Section 22.1: Introduction Section 22.2: Common errors Section 22.3: Dereferencing a Pointer Section 22.4: Dereferencing a Pointer to a struct Section 22.5: Const Pointers Section 22.6: Function pointers Section 22.7: Polymorphic behaviour with void pointers Section 22.8: Address-of Operator ( & ) Section 22.9: Initializing Pointers Section 22.10: Pointer to Pointer Section 22.11: void* pointers as arguments and return values to standard functions Section 22.12: Same Asterisk, Dierent Meanings Chapter 23: Sequence points Section 23.1: Unsequenced expressions Section 23.2: Sequenced expressions Section 23.3: Indeterminately sequenced expressions Chapter 24: Function Pointers Section 24.1: Introduction Section 24.2: Returning Function Pointers from a Function Section 24.3: Best Practices Section 24.4: Assigning a Function Pointer Section 24.5: Mnemonic for writing function pointers Section 24.6: Basics Chapter 25: Function Parameters Section 25.1: Parameters are passed by value Section 25.2: Passing in Arrays to Functions Section 25.3: Order of function parameter execution Section 25.4: Using pointer parameters to return multiple values Section 25.5: Example of function returning struct containing values with error codes Chapter 26: Pass 2D-arrays to functions Section 26.1: Pass a 2D-array to a function Section 26.2: Using flat arrays as 2D arrays Chapter 27: Error handling Section 27.1: errno Section 27.2: strerror Section 27.3: perror Chapter 28: Undefined behavior Section 28.1: Dereferencing a pointer to variable beyond its lifetime Section 28.2: Copying overlapping memory Section 28.3: Signed integer overflow Section 28.4: Use of an uninitialized variable Section 28.5: Data race Section 28.6: Read value of pointer that was freed Section 28.7: Using incorrect format specifier in printf Section 28.8: Modify string literal Section 28.9: Passing a null pointer to printf %s conversion Section 28.10: Modifying any object more than once between two sequence points Section 28.11: Freeing memory twice Section 28.12: Bit shifting using negative counts or beyond the width of the type Section 28.13: Returning from a function that's declared with `_Noreturn` or `noreturn` function specifier Section 28.14: Accessing memory beyond allocated chunk Section 28.15: Modifying a const variable using a pointer Section 28.16: Reading an uninitialized object that is not backed by memory Section 28.17: Addition or subtraction of pointer not properly bounded Section 28.18: Dereferencing a null pointer Section 28.19: Using ush on an input stream Section 28.20: Inconsistent linkage of identifiers Section 28.21: Missing return statement in value returning function Section 28.22: Division by zero Section 28.23: Conversion between pointer types produces incorrectly aligned result Section 28.24: Modifying the string returned by getenv, strerror, and setlocale functions Chapter 29: Random Number Generation Section 29.1: Basic Random Number Generation Section 29.2: Permuted Congruential Generator Section 29.3: Xorshift Generation Section 29.4: Restrict generation to a given range Chapter 30: Preprocessor and Macros Section 30.1: Header Include Guards Section 30.2: #if 0 to block out code sections Section 30.3: Function-like macros Section 30.4: Source file inclusion Section 30.5: Conditional inclusion and conditional function signature modification Section 30.6: __cplusplus for using C externals in C++ code compiled with C++ - name mangling Section 30.7: Token pasting Section 30.8: Predefined Macros Section 30.9: Variadic arguments macro Section 30.10: Macro Replacement Section 30.11: Error directive Section 30.12: FOREACH implementation Chapter 31: Signal handling Section 31.1: Signal Handling with “signal()” Chapter 32: Variable arguments Section 32.1: Using an explicit count argument to determine the length of the va_list Section 32.2: Using terminator values to determine the end of va_list Section 32.3: Implementing functions with a `printf()`-like interface Section 32.4: Using a format string Chapter 33: Assertion Section 33.1: Simple Assertion Section 33.2: Static Assertion Section 33.3: Assert Error Messages Section 33.4: Assertion of Unreachable Code Section 33.5: Precondition and Postcondition Chapter 34: Generic selection Section 34.1: Check whether a variable is of a certain qualified type Section 34.2: Generic selection based on multiple arguments Section 34.3: Type-generic printing macro Chapter 35: X-macros Section 35.1: Trivial use of X-macros for printfs Section 35.2: Extension: Give the X macro as an argument Section 35.3: Enum Value and Identifier Section 35.4: Code generation Chapter 36: Aliasing and eective type Section 36.1: Eective type Section 36.2: restrict qualification Section 36.3: Changing bytes Section 36.4: Character types cannot be accessed through non-character types Section 36.5: Violating the strict aliasing rules Chapter 37: Compilation Section 37.1: The Compiler Section 37.2: File Types Section 37.3: The Linker Section 37.4: The Preprocessor Section 37.5: The Translation Phases Chapter 38: Inline assembly Section 38.1: gcc Inline assembly in macros Section 38.2: gcc Basic asm support Section 38.3: gcc Extended asm support Chapter 39: Identifier Scope Section 39.1: Function Prototype Scope Section 39.2: Block Scope Section 39.3: File Scope Section 39.4: Function scope Chapter 40: Implicit and Explicit Conversions Section 40.1: Integer Conversions in Function Calls Section 40.2: Pointer Conversions in Function Calls Chapter 41: Type Qualifiers Section 41.1: Volatile variables Section 41.2: Unmodifiable (const) variables Chapter 42: Typedef Section 42.1: Typedef for Structures and Unions Section 42.2: Typedef for Function Pointers Section 42.3: Simple Uses of Typedef Chapter 43: Storage Classes Section 43.1: auto Section 43.2: register Section 43.3: static Section 43.4: typedef Section 43.5: extern Section 43.6: _Thread_local Chapter 44: Declarations Section 44.1: Calling a function from another C file Section 44.2: Using a Global Variable Section 44.3: Introduction Section 44.4: Typedef Section 44.5: Using Global Constants Section 44.6: Using the right-left or spiral rule to decipher C declaration Chapter 45: Structure Padding and Packing Section 45.1: Packing structures Section 45.2: Structure padding Chapter 46: Memory management Section 46.1: Allocating Memory Section 46.2: Freeing Memory Section 46.3: Reallocating Memory Section 46.4: realloc(ptr, 0) is not equivalent to free(ptr) Section 46.5: Multidimensional arrays of variable size Section 46.6: alloca: allocate memory on stack Section 46.7: User-defined memory management Chapter 47: Implementation-defined behaviour Section 47.1: Right shift of a negative integer Section 47.2: Assigning an out-of-range value to an integer Section 47.3: Allocating zero bytes Section 47.4: Representation of signed integers Chapter 48: Atomics Section 48.1: atomics and operators Chapter 49: Jump Statements Section 49.1: Using return Section 49.2: Using goto to jump out of nested loops Section 49.3: Using break and continue Chapter 50: Create and include header files Section 50.1: Introduction Section 50.2: Self-containment Section 50.3: Minimality Section 50.4: Notation and Miscellany Section 50.5: Idempotence Section 50.6: Include What You Use (IWYU) Chapter 51: — character classification & conversion Section 51.1: Introduction Section 51.2: Classifying characters read from a stream Section 51.3: Classifying characters from a string Chapter 52: Side Eects Section 52.1: Pre/Post Increment/Decrement operators Chapter 53: Multi-Character Character Sequence Section 53.1: Trigraphs Section 53.2: Digraphs Chapter 54: Constraints Section 54.1: Duplicate variable names in the same scope Section 54.2: Unary arithmetic operators Chapter 55: Inlining Section 55.1: Inlining functions used in more than one source file Chapter 56: Unions Section 56.1: Using unions to reinterpret values Section 56.2: Writing to one union member and reading from another Section 56.3: Dierence between struct and union Chapter 57: Threads (native) Section 57.1: Inititialization by one thread Section 57.2: Start several threads Chapter 58: Multithreading Section 58.1: C11 Threads simple example Chapter 59: Interprocess Communication (IPC) Section 59.1: Semaphores Chapter 60: Testing frameworks Section 60.1: Unity Test Framework Section 60.2: CMocka Section 60.3: CppUTest Chapter 61: Valgrind Section 61.1: Bytes lost -- Forgetting to free Section 61.2: Most common errors encountered while using Valgrind Section 61.3: Running Valgrind Section 61.4: Adding flags Chapter 62: Common C programming idioms and developer practices Section 62.1: Comparing literal and variable Section 62.2: Do not leave the parameter list of a function blank — use void Chapter 63: Common pitfalls Section 63.1: Mixing signed and unsigned integers in arithmetic operations Section 63.2: Macros are simple string replacements Section 63.3: Forgetting to copy the return value of realloc into a temporary Section 63.4: Forgetting to allocate one extra byte for \0 Section 63.5: Misunderstanding array decay Section 63.6: Forgetting to free memory (memory leaks) Section 63.7: Copying too much Section 63.8: Mistakenly writing = instead of == when comparing Section 63.9: Newline character is not consumed in typical scanf() call Section 63.10: Adding a semicolon to a #define Section 63.11: Incautious use of semicolons Section 63.12: Undefined reference errors when linking Section 63.13: Checking logical expression against 'true' Section 63.14: Doing extra scaling in pointer arithmetic Section 63.15: Multi-line comments cannot be nested Section 63.16: Ignoring return values of library functions Section 63.17: Comparing floating point numbers Section 63.18: Floating point literals are of type double by default Section 63.19: Using character constants instead of string literals, and vice versa Section 63.20: Recursive function — missing out the base condition Section 63.21: Overstepping array boundaries Section 63.22: Passing unadjacent arrays to functions expecting "real" multidimensional arrays Credits You may also like