Looping

Loops provide a way to repeat commands and control how many times they are repeated. C provides a number of looping way.

while loop

The most basic loop in C is the while loop.A while statement is like a repeating if statement. Like an If statement, if the test condition is true: the statments get executed. The difference is that after the statements have been executed, the test condition is checked again. If it is still true the statements get executed again.This cycle repeats until the test condition evaluates to false.
Basic syntax of while loop is as follows:
Show Example

while ( expression ) { Single statement or Block of statements; }

for loop

for loop is similar to while, it's just written differently. for statements are often used to proccess lists such a range of numbers:
Basic syntax of for loop is as follows:
Show Example

for( expression1; expression2; expression3) { Single statement or Block of statements; }

In the above syntax:

• expression1 - Initialisese variables.
• expression2 - Condtional expression, as long as this condition is true, loop will keep executing.
• expression3 - expression3 is the modifier which may be simple increment of a variable.

do...while loop

do ... while is just like a while loop except that the test condition is checked at the end of the loop rather than the start. This has the effect that the content of the loop are always executed at least once.
Basic syntax of do...while loop is as follows:
Show Example

do
{
   Single statement
   or
   Block of statements;
}while(expression);

SELECTION STATEMENT: if

Selection Statements

Selection statements change the flow of program execution by evaluating the result of an expression, referred to as a condition. The if and switch statements are selection statements.

if Statement

An if statement evaluates a condition and executes its associated statement if the condition is true. Otherwise it skips the statement and processing continues on to the next statement following the if.


Figure 6-1: if Statement Diagram
Figure 6-1 illustrates the if statement. The expression that formulates the condition must evaluate to either true or false. True is any non-zero integer value.

if-else Statement

The if-else statement works like the if statement with one major difference. If the condition evaluates to false the statement following the else keyword will execute. A diagram of the if-else statement is shown in Figure 6-2.


Figure 6-2: if-else Statement Diagram

DATA TYPES IN C

In the C programming language, data types refers to an extensive system used for declaring variables or functions of different types. The type of a variable determines how much space it occupies in storage and how the bit pattern stored is interpreted.

The types in C can be classified as follows:

S.N.	Types and Description
1	Basic Types: They are arithmetic types and consists of the two types: (a) integer types and (b) floating-point types.
2	Enumerated types: They are again arithmetic types and they are used to define variables that can only be assigned certain discrete integer values throughout the program.
3	The type void: The type specifier void indicates that no value is available.
4	Derived types: They include (a) Pointer types, (b) Array types, (c) Structure types, (d) Union types and (e) Function types.

The array types and structure types are referred to collectively as the aggregate types. The type of a function specifies the type of the function's return value. We will see basic types in the following section where as other types will be covered in the upcoming chapters.

Integer Types

Following table gives you detail about standard integer types with its storage sizes and value ranges:

Type	Storage size	Value range
char	1 byte	-128 to 127 or 0 to 255
unsigned char	1 byte	0 to 255
signed char	1 byte	-128 to 127
int	2 or 4 bytes	-32,768 to 32,767 or -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
unsigned int	2 or 4 bytes	0 to 65,535 or 0 to 4,294,967,295
short	2 bytes	-32,768 to 32,767
unsigned short	2 bytes	0 to 65,535
long	4 bytes	-2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647
unsigned long	4 bytes	0 to 4,294,967,295

To get the exact size of a type or a variable on a particular platform, you can use the sizeof operator. The expressions sizeof(type) yields the storage size of the object or type in bytes.

Floating-Point Types

Following table gives you detail about standard float-point types with storage sizes and value ranges and their precision:

Type	Storage size	Value range	Precision
float	4 byte	1.2E-38 to 3.4E+38	6 decimal places
double	8 byte	2.3E-308 to 1.7E+308	15 decimal places
long double	10 byte	3.4E-4932 to 1.1E+4932	19 decimal places

The header file float.h defines macros that allow you to use these values and other details about the binary representation of real numbers in your programs.

The void Type

The void type specifies that no value is available. It is used in three kinds of situations:

S.N.	Types and Description
1	Function returns as void There are various functions in C who do not return value or you can say they return void. A function with no return value has the return type as void. For example void exit (int status);
2	Function arguments as void There are various functions in C who do not accept any parameter. A function with no parameter can accept as a void. For example int rand(void);
3	Pointers to void  A pointer of type void * represents the address of an object, but not its type. For example a memory allocation function void *malloc( size_t size ); returns a pointer to void which can be casted to any data type.

The void type may not be understood to you at this point, so let us proceed and we will cover these concepts in upcoming chapters.