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Programming in C

The intention of the course is to give a thorough grounding in programming in C. All major features of ISO standard C will be covered. On completion of the course, attendees should be able to write well-structured and clearly understandable programs of moderate complexity. The use of ISO standard C will allow programs to be compiled and executed on any platform for which a conformant C compiler is available.

The course comprises ten 3-hour sessions held weekly (apart from public holidays). Each session will consist of a 60 to 90 minute lecture, followed by a laboratory workshop where exercises to reinforce the lecture material will be practise. Teaching staff will supervise the practical sessions and assist attendees where necessary. For the practical sessions, each attendee will have sole use of a modern Unix workstation, operating either as a networked computer or X-terminal into a central computer.

Course availability

Interested in attending this course?

To register your interest submit the expression of interest form.

To enroll in this short course:

  • you must submit an Application Form [PDF 70kb] to secure a place. Submission of an application form is confirmation of your intent to enroll and make a reservation. Your credit card will be charge 7-14 days prior to the scheduled commencement date. Or
  • for online payment please click here (open external site). Payment will be directly debited from your credit card

Download Spring 2013 Time Table (pdf, 82kb)

Who should attend?

Programmers who have some background in a language other than C and who wish to develop skills in the C language.

Read the following information about the importance of C Programming Language. C is:

  • a minimalistic programming language;
  • suitable for many systems-programming applications;
  • suitable for machine-independent programming.

Indeed a C program (standards-compliant and portably written) may be compiled for huge number of different computer platforms and operating systems with minimal change to its source code. Its versatility is demonstrated by its availablility on a very wide range of platforms, from embedded microcontrollers to supercomputers.

Professional recognition

Those who successfully complete the course will gain a credit of 30 PCP points (opens an external site) from the Australian Computer Society (ACS) (opens an external site).

Course details 

Course fee

$1150, $0 gst 

Objectives

The intention of the course is to give a thorough grounding in programming in C. All major features of ISO standard C will be covered. On completion of the course, attendees should be able to write well-structured and clearly understandable programs of moderate complexity. The use of ISO standard C will allow programs to be compiled and executed on any platform for which a conformant C compiler is available.

Assessment

Assessment for this course is optional. Students who wish to undertake an assessment task will be given a programming assignment. Students who satisfactorily complete this assignment will receive a certificate. Other students will receive a letter certifying the attendance at the course.

Outline

  • Compiling, simple programs, arithmetic and relational operators, and if statements
  • Keywords, types, expressions, operators, precedence & associativity and looping constructs
  • Input/Output (keyboard & screen), switch statements, transfers of control, functions, parameter passing, recursion and storage classes
  • Declaring & initialising arrays, strings, arrays & parameter passing, const qualifier and multi-dimensional arrays
  • Pointers, address & indirection operators, pointers as function parameters, const qualifiers & pointers, pointer arithmetic, ragged arrays, pointers to functions and reading complex declarations
  • Character and string functions, formatted input and output
  • Declaring & initialising structures, accessing structure members, typedef, unions, bit manipulations and enumeration constants
  • File I/O, text & binary files, sequential & random access files and command line arguments
  • Data structures, self-referential structures, linked lists, stacks, queues, binary trees, dynamic storage allocation, insertion and deletion from linked lists, and sorting using binary tree
  • The C preprocessor, conditional compilation, predefined symbolic constants, large projects & separate compilation, external and internal linkage and the make utility under Unix

Text

Course notes and a textbook are included in the price of the course.