Lab 06 -- C Programming, Arrays, Strings and Pointers

This page gives an overview of the lecture and the lab session on Sep 04, 2025.

Short lecture summary

• Arrays - declaration, usage and examples. sizeof operator and size_t type. No check for array bounds in C.

• Pointers in C. Reason behind the use of & operator in scanf function. Referencing and de-referencing. Use of pointers via examples.

• Dangers associated with pointer and array use. Strings in C as array of characters and the null character \0.

• Multi-dimensional arrays. Simple examples. Row and column major form of representation in memory.

Readings

1. Notes on C programming by Jasine.

   These notes are based on the lectures for the course CS1100 Introduction to Programming (Aug-Dec 2016) offered at IIT Palakkad. You can find a link to the complete set of notes here.

   Read Lectures

   • CS1100 - Lecture 6. On Pointers
   • CS1100 - Lecture 7. On Pointer Arithmetic
   • CS1100 - Lecture 11. Two dimensional arrays
   • CS1100 - Lecture 16. Representation of integer and float
   • CS1100 - Lecture 17. On Characters and Strings

2. C Programming A Modern Approach (2nd Ed) by K. N. King (Online version)

   

   Read chapters

   • Chapter 8. Arrays
   • Chapter 11. Pointers
   • Chapter 12. Pointers and Arrays
   • Chapter 13. Strings

Practise

1. Practise all interactive exercises from Chapter 2 of Dive into Systems

2. Exercises on C pointers.

3. Puzzles on C programming. Work out Part 1D, 2D, P and Part S from this link.

4. Exercise problems from here and here.

Additional readings

• Arrays and pointers from Essential C.

• Notes by Dave Marshall on pointers and how to use them.

• Notes on Programming in C. Check the section on pointers.

• Chapter 2 - Representing and Manipulating Information from Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, third edition