Today's scientist or engineer has many more computerized problem solving environments available than those of only a short time ago and so they are less dependant on mastering a scientific programming language such as FORTRAN. Many universities have made the switch to teaching the programming language C to science and engineering students, as it is still necessary in many fields to be able to produce one's own programs. This text teaches the essentials of C programming, concentrating on what the reader needs to know to produce working stand-alone programs to solve typical scientific and engineering problems. It is a learning-by-doing book with many examples and exercises and lays a foundation of scientific programming concepts and techniques that will prove valuable for those who might eventually move on to another language. The text is written for undergraduate students who are literate with a computer and typical applications but are new to programming.
1 Programming Preliminaries.- 1.1 A Five-Step Problem-Solving Process.- 1.2 Defining a Pseudocode Language for Algorithm Development.- 1.3 Organizing Pseudocode Into a Program.- 1.4 Examples.- 1.5 What Is the Point of Programming?.- 1.6 Your First C Program.- 2 The Basics of C Programming.- 2.1 C Program Layout.- 2.2 Basic Input and Output.- 2.3 Reading External Text Files of Unknown Length.- 2.4 Reading a File One Character at a Time.- 2.5 Applications.- 2.6 Debugging Your Programs.- 3 Data Types, Operators, and Functions.- 3.1 Specifying and Using Data Types.- 3.2 Operators.- 3.3 Type Casting.- 3.4 Intrinsic Functions.- 3.5 Simple User-Defined Functions.- 3.6 Applications.- 3.7 Debugging Your Programs.- 3.8 Exercises.- 4 Selection and Repetition Constructs.- 4.1 Relational and Logical Operators.- 4.2 Selection (IF…THEN…ELSE…) Constructs.- 4.3 Choosing Alternatives From a List of Possibilities.- 4.4 Repetition (LOOP…) Constructs.- 4.5 Applications.- 4.6 Debugging Your Programs.- 4.7 Exercises.- 5 More About Modular Programming.- 5.1 Defining Information Interfaces in C.- 5.2 Menu-Driven Programs.- 5.3 More About Function Interfaces.- 5.4 Recursive Functions.- 5.5 Using Prewritten Code Modules.- 5.6 Using Functions as Arguments and Parameters.- 5.7 Passing Arguments to the main Function.- 5.8 Applications.- 5.9 Debugging Your Programs.- 5.10 Exercises.- 6 Arrays.- 6.1 Arrays in Structured Programming.- 6.2 One-Dimensional Array Implementation in C.- 6.3 Using Arrays in Function Calls.- 6.4 Multidimensional Arrays.- 6.5 Accessing Arrays With Pointers.- 6.6 More About Strings.- 6.8 Debugging Your Programs.- 6.9 Exercises.- 7 User-Defined Data Objects.- 7.1 Creating User-Defined Data Objects.- 7.2 Arrays of Structures.- 7.3 Functions With Structures as Parametersand Data Types.- 7.4 Applications.- 7.5 Debugging Your Programs.- 7.6 Exercises.- 8 Searching and Sorting Algorithms.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Searching Algorithms.- 8.3 Sorting Algorithms.- 8.5 Application: Merging Sorted Lists.- 8.6 Debugging Your Programs.- 8.7 Exercises.- 9 Basic Statistics and Numerical Analysis.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 Basic Descriptive Statistics.- 9.3 Numerical Differentiation.- 9.4 Numerical Integration.- 9.5 Solving Systems of Linear Equations.- 9.6 Finding the Roots of Equations.- 9.7 Numerical Solutions to Differential Equations.- 9.8 Exercises.- 10 Binary Files, Random Access, and Dynamic Allocation.- 10.1 Binary and Random Access Files.- 10.2 Dynamic Allocation and Linked Lists.- 10.3 Queues and Stacks.- 10.4 Application: Managing Data From Remote Instruments.- 10.5 Exercises.- Appendices.- Appendix 1: Table of ASCII Characters for Windows/DOS-Based PCs.- Appendix 2: Program Listings by Chapter.- Appendix 3: Glossary.
