C Programming Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards for C programming concepts.

C

A general-purpose programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs during the development of Unix.

System Programming Language

A term used to describe C because it is useful for writing compilers and operating systems.

Cross-platform Language

A feature of C where a program written on one machine can be executed on another machine without rewriting the program.

main()

A special function in every C program where program execution begins.

include

A line that tells the compiler to include information about the standard input/output library.

Compiler

A tool that converts source code to object code for a specific platform.

Linker

A tool that resolves external references and produces the executable module.

stdio.h

A standard header file in C for file and console I/O operations.

stdlib.h

A standard header file in C for common utility functions.

string.h

A standard header file in C for string and byte manipulation.

ctype.h

A standard header file in C for character types.

errno.h

A standard header file in C that defines errno used for reporting system errors.

math.h

A standard header file in C for math functions.

signal.h

A standard header file in C for signal handling facilities.

stdint.h

A standard header file in C for standard integers.

time.h

A standard header file in C for time-related facilities.

Variable

A named space in memory to store data.

Declaration

A statement that specifies the properties of a variable (type and name).

int

A data type representing integers.

float

A data type representing numbers that may have a fractional part.

printf

A function used for formatted output in C.

scanf

A function used for formatted input in C.

Keyword

Reserved words in C that cannot be used as variable/function/struct names.

Control Statements

Statements that control the flow of execution based on certain conditions (e.g., if, else if, else).

While Loop

A loop that executes a block of code as long as a specified condition is true.

For Loop

A loop that executes a block of code a specific number of times.

Array

A collection of elements of the same data type, stored in contiguous memory locations.

Function

A block of code that performs a specific task and can be called multiple times from different parts of a program.

String

An array of characters terminated with a null character '\0'.

Pointers

Variables that store the memory address of another variable.

malloc

A function to allocate memory from the heap.

free

A function to release dynamically allocated memory.

Heap

A global memory region of a program for dynamic memory allocation.