Systems Programming - Fall 2021

Lectures and Class Material

• Introduction to the Course: syllabus; what is systems programming; why it is useful to know the C programming language; getting started: a very first example; using the compiler; a very simple Makefile.
  Material: slides used in class
• Basics of C: Basic types, literals, minimal I/O, basic expressions, control structures.
  Exercises: wordcount Material: lecture slides/notes
• Memory model: pointers, arrays, and strings, basic use of pointers (e.g., in string processing); more I/O.
  Exercises: flipline, revargs, sortstrings, concatenate strings, delete digits. Material: lecture slides/notes
• Data Structures: Aggregate types; structures and unions; enumerations; type definitions; initializers for structures and arrays; nested structures, multidimensional arrays, and other non-trivial types. Dynamic memory allocation.
  Material: lecture slides/notes
• Basics of testing and debugging: debugging C programs with a symbolic debugger. Using valgrind to detect memory leaks and undefined behavior.
• Structure of a program: the main function; defining functions; static variables; global variables; scope rules.
  Material: lecture slides/notes
• More details on the build process; the pre-processor; multi-file projects; compilation units; symbols; shared declarations; the pre-processor; the linkers; modularization and information hiding in C.
  Material: lecture slides/notes
• Short digression on make: basic usage; a simple build activity; dependency graphs; complex build; other uses and advanced features.
• More on using pointers; other dynamic data structures; pointer arithmetic. Pointers and structures, pointers and arrays. Pointers to functions.
  Material: lecture slides/notes
• An in-depth look at expressions and the execution model: operator precedence; type conversions; the assignment statement; the execution model: evaluation order; sequence points.
  Material: lecture notes
• Defining classes and objects in C. Using pointers to functions: generic objects and virtual methods.
  Material: lecture notes
• Introduction to C++: classes, exceptions, namespaces. standard library: strings, containers, basic algorithms. Classes: definitions, methods, constructors, destructors, virtual methods.
  Material: lecture notes.