Lab 08 -- C Programming - Recursion, Struct and Dynamic Memory Allocation

This page gives an overview of the lecture and the lab session on Sep 18, 2025.

Short lecture summary

• Function declaration and definition. Scope of variables. Local and global scope. Recursion, function calls, stack area and stack frame.

• Calling conventions - call by value and call by reference mechanisms

• User-defined types - struct. Usage and examples.

• Dynamic memory allocation. Heap area of memory. malloc() and free() function. Importance of free call in preventing memory leaks.

• Using math libraries and the need to compile using -lm option.

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 16. Functions
   • CS1100 - Lecture 20. On program stack and stack frames
   • CS1100 - Lecture 21. Recursion
   • CS1100 - Lecture 23. Call by value using pointers
   • CS1100 - Lecture 25. Handling arrays
   • CS1100 - Lecture 26. User defined types
   • CS1100 - Lecture 27. User defined types, arrow operator

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

   

   Read chapters

   • Chapter 16. Struct, union and enumeration
   • Chapter 17. Advanced use of pointers
   • Chapter 23. Library functions (limits.h, math.h) in C

Practise

1. Work out the problems in exercises folder of lab08 in the gitserver repo. Also fix the issues in all the c files appearing in error directory.

2. Puzzles on C programming. Work out Part SL, Part 2D and Part T from this link.

Additional readings

• Pointer arithmetic is a necessary skill to learn GPU programming. Check the slides by Will Landau. The code appearing the slides is available here.

• Notes by Dave Marshall on dynamic memory allocation.

• C programming guide by Beej Jorgensen.

• Chapter 9.9 - Dynamic Memory Allocation Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, third edition

• Chapter 9.11 - Common memory related bugs in C programs Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective, third edition