CSM217: C for Computer Scientists

The biggest disadvantage is that you will not be able to practice writing programs in C while I am in attendence. Writing C programs isn't a particularly big problem - debugging a program, however, is, especially if you've only got a cryptic error message to go on.

However, despite the disadvantages of the course not being lab-based, I believe that I have a workable solution. The first four lectures are dedicated to getting to grips with the C syntax. I suggest that you work on these four lectures in your own time, and I will provide remote support instead.

I have added a number of exercises and their solutions to each lecture. You are asked to attempt these exercises. If you run into difficulties, you can either look at the solution and try to figure out what went wrong, or you can mail me the exercise description that you attempted together with your source code and a description of the problem you encountered. I will normally respond within 24 hours (not including weekends :-)). Please do not send me binaries, because I will trash them without attempting to run them. Please also feel free to attempt exercises from any source that you have handy. You cannot learn C without practicing...

I will also maintain a FAQ list, which will summarise problems that many people encounter, so please check the FAQ which may contain the solution to your problem. I will also create a list of common compiler error messages, and give descriptions of what is likely to be the source of the error. I can do this only for the gcc C compiler. Gcc is available from The GNU Project and Free Software Foundation, and is available for a large number of platforms.

I would like you all to have worked your way from Lecture 1 to Lecture 4 (or go to the index for CSM217) before the lecture on Tuesday, 23rd October, 2001. We will still have a lecture on Tuesday, 16th October, 2001, but instead of following the lecture notes, I will summarise the most common problems that you have been experiencing and give a lecture on them instead.