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Syntax/Format of C program

C Programs

A C program can vary from 3 lines to millions of lines and it should be written into one or more text files with extension ".c"; for example, hello.c. You can use "vi", "vim" or any other text editor to write your C program into a file.

Before we study the basic building blocks of the C programming language, let us look at a bare minimum C program structure so that we can take it as a reference in the upcoming chapters.

    Syntax/Format of simple C program

main ()  <---------------------Function name
 {  <------------------------------Start of program
        ........
        ........  <-------------------Program statement
        ........
 }  <------------------------------End of program

    Hello World Example

A C program basically consists of the following parts −
Preprocessor Commands
Functions
Variables
Statements & Expressions
Comments
Let us look at a simple code that would print the words "Hello World" −

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
 {
   /* my first program in C */
   printf("Hello, World! \n");

   return 0;
}

Let us take a look at the various parts of the above program −
The first line of the program #include <stdio.h> is a preprocessor command, which tells a C compiler to include stdio.h file before going to actual compilation.
The next line int main() is the main function where the program execution begins.
The next line /*...*/ will be ignored by the compiler and it has been put to add additional comments in the program. So such lines are called comments in the program.
The next line printf(...) is another function available in C which causes the message "Hello, World!" to be displayed on the screen.
The next line return 0; terminates the main() function and returns the value 0.

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