First Engineering Computer Science (COMP10060)

Outline Syllabus
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Introduction: what is a computer? what is an
 algorithm? what is a program? An engineering
 problem-solving methodology. General format
 of a C program.

Fundamentals of C: variables and constants.
 Assignment statements. Formatted input/output
 from/to the keyboard/screen. Basic datatypes.
 Type casting. Keywords and identifiers.
 Arithmetic, relational, and logical operators;
 conditionals. Operator precedence.

Loops: for, while, do-while. Infinite and
 unbounded loops.

Algorithm development and stepwise refinement:
 flowcharts and pseudocode. Sources and types
 of errors in C programming.

Functions: C library functions. Programmer-
 defined functions: definition, declaration,
 function call. Formal and actual function
 parameters: call by value. Storage class and
 scope.

1-D arrays: declaration and initialization.
 Simple linear searching with arrays. Passing
 arrays to functions: call by address.

Pointers and memory addresses. Declaring,
 initializing, and dereferencing pointer
 variables. Relationship between pointers and
 arrays; pointer arithmetic. Pointers and
 functions: call by address.

Strings. Pointers to strings. String input.
 Strings and functions. C string library
 functions.

File input/output. Data file formats.

Structures. Pointers to structures. Nested
 structures. Arrays of structures.