CMPSC 311 - Intro to Systems Programming - C Fundamentals

Vocabulary flashcards for CMPSC 311 - Introduction to Systems Programming, covering C programming fundamentals.

Source files

Files with extensions .c and .h, representing the human-readable code.

Object files

Files with the extension .o, resulting from the compilation of source code.

Linker

A program that combines object files and libraries to create an executable program.

Library

A collection of pre-compiled object files that can be linked into a program.

main()

The function where all C programs begin.

Function Prototype

A declaration that specifies the return type and arguments of a function.

stdin

Standard input stream provided to UNIX programs.

stdout

Standard output stream provided to UNIX programs.

stderr

Standard error stream provided to UNIX programs.

Pass-by-value

Passing the value of a variable to a function. Changes to the parameter within the function do not affect the original variable.

Pass-by-reference

Passing the memory address of a variable to a function, allowing the function to modify the original variable.

&

Operator used to obtain the memory address of a variable.

Dereferencing (*)

Operator used to access the value stored at a memory address held by a pointer.

const

Qualifier that indicates a variable's value cannot be changed after initialization.

Array

A contiguous block of memory used to store elements of the same type. C arrays do not have built-in methods or bounds checking.

String in C

An array of characters terminated by a NULL character ('\0').

Error codes

Values that indicate a function executed successfully or had an error.

malloc()

Allocating memory in the heap segment.

free()

Freeing memory allocated in the heap segment, done to prevent memory leaks.