Intro to C #1: bases and bits

Starter code: bases-and-bits-package.tar
Upload via Moodle only your completed copy of bases-and-bits.c

Goals

• Get started with C
• Start thinking about integers, bases, and bits

Rubric

Programming assignment #1: bases-and-bits

For this assignment, you will implement two C functions involving the C int type. One of these functions, void print_int_in_binary(int n), once implemented, will do just as its name says. The other, int count_one_bits(int n) will count the number of 1 bits found in the binary representation of n.

Neither function requires a lot of code, but both will require you to think clearly about the binary representation of integers, and how that representation can be accessed directly in C.

A few concepts and C constructs you might find useful for this assignment:

• printf, including the format specifiers %d, %o, and %x
• if and else
• loops (while and for)
• the bitwise AND operator: &
• (not necessary, but possibly handy) the mod operator: %

Homework packages for this class

Several of the assignments for this class will include a package of starter code plus other infrastructure. I will generally deliver each package to you as a tar file, which is an old-school but very common way of sharing a collection of documents as a single file.

Part of the goal of this assignment is to get you familiar with the code packages we will use.

What you should do

• Grab a copy of bases-and-bits-package.tar and extract its contents.
• Read the readme.txt file.
• Try running the starter code as-is: make test
• Read the Makefile and see if you can make any sense of it, and how it caused make test to do what it did.
• Read the code in bases-and-bits.h and bases-and-bits.c.
• Based on the instructions in bases-and-bits.h, write your implementations of the functions in bases-and-bits.c. You can run make test any time to see whether your program is compiling, running, and getting one simple test case right.
• Devise your own tests (even if you ignore make and just run bases-and-bits manually). Don't assume that getting the "27" test case right means your code is correct for all the cases.
• Done? Submit your copy of bases-and-bits.c and only that file to Moodle.

Have fun!

Don't by shy about experimenting and asking lots of questions.