Lab 4 -- Introduction to Pointers and Arrays

Lab 4: Introduction to Pointers and Arrays
Due: 11:59 PM, Friday, October 2, 2015

In this lab you will start to learn about pointers and the closely related topics (at least for C programmers) of arrays and strings. Even if you never write a C program after this course, understanding how C programs manage pointers will improve your programming in nearly any language.

Recall that you will also be finishing up the programming assignment from last week's lab, so there is not much additional programming here.

Read the first 4 sections of Chapter 5 in K&R. It's only 11 pages, but it's a pretty intense 11 pages.

Question 1: In your own words in a sentence or two, explain what happens when you execute a statement like p = &c; at the top of page 94. (1 point)

Practice Program: Write a C program called swapper.c that demonstrates that the swap function in the middle of p. 95 does not perform a swap of the values passed in (from the perspective of the caller), but the swap function at the top of p. 96 does. Include tests that attempt to swap regular int variables as well as array entries. (7 points)

Question 2: Explain briefly, again in your own words, why the first swap function cannot work as intended. (2 points)

The above example includes two C functions that each perform an insertion sort on an array of int. You can switch between the two implementations of the sorting function to verify that both do work.

Question 3: Draw memory diagrams (like those on p. 96, but show all varibles in existence in both main and the sort function) to show the state of memory during the second iteration of the for loop right before the while loop starts in the isort example. Include diagrams for an execution using the isort function as shown in the example and when that call is replaced with a call to isortptr. (6 points)

Practice Program: Add a function to isort.c to perform a pointer-based array printing (along the lines of isortptr) called print_array_ptr. (4 points)

Please submit all required files as email attachments to terescoj AT strose.edu by 11:59 PM, Friday, October 2, 2015. Be sure to check that you have used the correct file names and that your submission matches all of the submission guidelines listed on the course home page. In order to email your files, you will need to transfer them from mogul to the computer from which you wish to send the email. There are a number of options, including the sftp command from the Mac command line.

This lab is graded out of 50 points, including the programming assignment described in the previous assignment.

Grading Breakdown
Lab questions	9 points
Practice program `swapper.c` correctness	7 points
Practice program `isort.c` pointer-based printing	4 points
`extremes.c` correctness	20 points
`extremes.c` design	3 point
`extremes.c` documentation	3 points
`extremes.c` style	3 point
`extremes.c` efficiency	1 point
Total	50