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Notes: 01-21 Intro

·445 words·3 mins·

Welcome to 2470
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  • Instructor: Nat Tuck
  • Course: CS2470 Systems Programming in C/C++

Where does this course fit in?

  • You’re a CS major
  • You can write computer programs.
  • In this course, we explore some of the details of how actual programs run on concrete computers.

The plot:

  • To do things, programs need to use hardware resources.
  • 1980 personal computer: one program at a time.
  • Two programs at a time means conflicts (who gets input from keyboard? don’t want to mix output to line printer!)
  • Add a dedicated program to talk the the hardware: the OS. Other programs ask the OS to access shared resources for them.
  • To ask the OS to do stuff for you, you make a system call.
  • This class is about writing programs that use system calls.
  • System calls are different on different operating systems, so we need to pick a specific one to use.
  • We’re using Linux. More specifically, a modern Debian-family Linux.
  • Even with an OS, programs are still written to target a specific hardware archetecture.
  • Compiled programs are binary data - machine code - and different kinds of processors have different machine codes.
  • We’ll be using a common archetecture for desktop / laptop computers, the AMD64 archetecture.
  • A platform is the combination of processor archetecture and OS, for us that’s AMD64 Linux.

Course Resources
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Inkfish
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  • Show Inkfish
  • Show hw01

Syllabus
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  • There’s a schedule. It may resemble what happens.
  • Grades: Homeworks, Labs, Project
  • Homework: These are difficult programming assignments.
  • Labs: These are in-class programming assignments.
  • Project: This is a large, difficult programming assignment.

Cheating

  • Don’t submit other people’s code as your own.
  • Don’t share solutions with other students.

AI

  • You shouldn’t be turning in AI generated code unless explicitly allowed by the HW assignment.
  • You can use AI tools all you want to analyze code and answer questions about it.

Introducing C
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// A C program is a collection of functions.
// Here's a minimal program with one function
#include <stdio.h>

int
main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
  printf("Hello C program\n");
  return 0;
}

# Direct C => binary
$ gcc -o hello hello.c
$ ./hello

More stuff to show/say:

  • Command line args
  • A C program is a collection of functions
  • Manpages
  • Built-in types in C: char, short, int, long
  • Types have sizes: sizeof(…)
  • Strings are a trick.

Basic Linux and Vim
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  • Working on the Linux command line.
  • Command line basics: command, arguments
  • Directories, pwd, cd, mkdir, rmdir

vim editor

  • syntax highlighting and auto-indentation
  • editing modes
  • combining
  • navigating with relative moves
  • cutting and copying lines and groups of lines
  • navigating with ? and /
Nat Tuck
Author
Nat Tuck