Week 02 Tutorial Questions

  1. What are the types of variables that we've seen so far and what do they represent?
  2. What is the difference between a variable and a constant?
  3. What is the difference between declaring variable and using #define?
  4. What is the syntax of C if statements? What is the role of if statements in programs?
  5. A leap year is a year that has 366 days instead of 365. There is a leap year every year divisible by four except for years which are both divisible by 100 and not divisible by 400.

    For more detail information of leap years see: Leap Year

    Draw a simple flow chart showing the branches of possibilities to decide if a year is a Leap Year.

    For some humourous information about flow charts see: Flow Charts (xkcd).

    Can you then write some simple code using if/else statements in C that decides if a year is a Leap Year? (hint: modulus is a useful way to decide whether a number is divisible by another) This code question will be continued in this week's lab, so try to remember or keep a copy/photo of the diagram and code you've written.

  6. The value of C  arithmetic operations depends on the types of the operand. If the types of the operands differ, C automatically converts the types as appropriate.

    Determine the value of each expression and sub-expression:

    • 1 / 2 * 500
    • 1 / 2.0 * 500
    • (17 / 5) * 5 + (17 % 5)
    • (12 - 17) % 6 - 4
  7. The and (&&) and or (||) operators can be used to combine multiple statments into one (such as the statements created in the leap year activity). Write either a true or false statement about this dog and share with the class. Are your classmates' statments true or false?
    A yellow, orange, and pink dog (Source: Jeffree Star Cosmetics, 2012)

    For example:

    • The dog is pink || blue
    • The dog is pink && blue
  8. Write a program rectangle_area.c that reads in 2 integers which are the side-length of a rectangle, and then prints the area of the rectangle.

    For example: 

    ./rectangle_area
Please enter rectangle length: 3
Please enter rectangle width: 5
Area = 15
./rectangle_area
Please enter rectangle length: 42
Please enter rectangle width: 42
Area = 1764
  9. What is a bit?
  10. What is a byte?
  11. How many distinct values can be represented with a single byte?
  12. How would we represent integers using 4 bits? Is there some kind of scheme we could use to reliably store integer information using bits?
  13. What is a file?
  14. What is a directory?