Syllabus - Fundamentals of Computer Science (CB103)

General problem solving concepts

Algorithm, and Flowchart for problem solving with Sequential Logic Structure, Decisions and Loops.Imperative languages: Introduction to imperative language; syntax and constructs of a specific language (ANSI C)

Types Operator and Expressions with discussion of variable naming and Hungarian Notation

Variable Names, Data Type and Sizes (Little Endian Big Endian), Constants, Declarations, Arithmetic Operators, Relational Operators, Logical Operators, Type Conversion, Increment Decrement Operators, Bitwise Operators, Assignment Operators and Expressions, Precedence and Order of Evaluation, proper variable naming and Hungarian Notation.

Control Flow with discussion on structured and unstructured programming

Statements and Blocks, If-Else-If, Switch, Loops – while, do, for, break and continue, goto labels, structured and un-structured programming.Functions and Program Structure with discussion on standard library: Basics of functions, parameter passing and returning type, C main return as integer, External, Auto, Local, Static, Register Variables, Scope Rules, Block structure, Initialisation, Recursion, Pre-processor,Standard Library Functions and return types.

Pointers and Arrays

Pointers and address, Pointers and Function Arguments, Pointers and Arrays, Address Arithmetic, character Pointers and Functions, Pointer Arrays, Pointer to Pointer, Multi-dimensional array and Row/column major formats, Initialisation of Pointer Arrays, Command line arguments, Pointer to functions, complicated declarations and how they are evaluated. Structures: Basic Structures, Structures and Functions, Array of structures, Pointer of structures, Self-referral structures, Table look up, typedef, unions, Bit-fields

Input and Output

Standard I/O, Formatted Output – printf, Formated Input – scanf, Variable length argument list, file access including FILE structure, fopen, stdin, sdtout and stderr, Error Handling including exit, perror and error.h, Line I/O, related miscellaneous functions.Unix system Interface: File Descriptor, Low level I/O – read and write, open, create, close and unlink, Random access – lseek, Discussions on Listing Directory, Storage allocator. Programming Method:Debugging, Macro, User Defined Header, User Defined Library Function, makefile utility.