college/Spring-2024/CS-2124/Assignment-1/README.org

#+LATEX_HEADER: \usepackage[margin=0.5in]{geometry}

* Assignment 1

ABC123: =zfp106=

Name: =Price Hiller=

Course: =CS2124=

Section: =0C3=

Semester: =Spring 2024=

** Source Code

The full source code for this project can be found at [[https://git.orion-technologies.io/Price/college/src/branch/Development/Spring-2023/CS-2124/Assignment-1]]
** Running the Programs
1. Install [[https://cmake.org/download/][cmake]] version 3.25 or greater.
2. Ensure you have recent version of ~make~ at the time of writing. This project successfully
   compiles with ~GNU make~ version ~4.4.1~.
3. Go the directory with ~CMakeLists.txt~ and run ~cmake .~ to generate a Makefile.
4. Run ~make all~ to compile all the programs.
5. Go into the newly created ~bin~ directory where all the compiled programs will be output to.
6. Run the programs in sequence, from ~C1~ to ~C12~ to ensure the file operations work as
   expected.

** Program Outputs and Question Solutions (C's)

*** C1 (Creation of a new file)

[[./assets/C1-output.png]]

*** C2 (Opening and closing an existing file)

[[./assets/C2-output.png]]

*** C3 (Writing to a file)

[[./assets/C3-output.png]]

*** C4 (Reading from file)

[[./assets/C4-output.png]]

*** C5 (Moving to a specific location in a file (end of file))

[[./assets/C5-output.png]]

*** C6 (Computes string's length and copies one string into another string)

[[./assets/C6-output.png]]

*** C7 (Concatenates(joins) two strings)

[[./assets/C7-output.png]]

*** C8 (Compares two strings)

[[./assets/C8-output.png]]

*** C9 (Converts String to lowercase)

[[./assets/C9-output.png]]

*** C10 (Converts string to uppercase)

[[./assets/C10-output.png]]

*** C11 (Dynamic Memory with Malloc)

[[./assets/C11-output.png]]

*** C12 (Dynamic Memory with Calloc)

[[./assets/C12-output.png]]

*** C13 (Describe the difference between ~malloc~ and ~calloc~)
~malloc~ and ~calloc~ both return a pointer to allocated memory for some purpose. The major
difference is that ~calloc~, by default, will initialize all elements in that allocated memory
to the value ~0~ whereas ~malloc~ does not modify anything in that block of memory before
returning a pointer.

You can achieve a poor man's ~calloc~ by using ~malloc~ with ~memset~ to initialize the
newly returned block of memory to ~0~ yourself. This will almost certainly be slower than most
~calloc~ usages as ~calloc~ "knows" the kernel will return something known as a virtual zero page and
thus will be receiving (on most systems) a chunk of memory that has all its values initialized
to ~0~ by default. Thus ~calloc~ can "know" when it needs to allocate those ~0~'s itself or if
it can skip the process and thereby be faster than ~malloc~ + ~memset~.

*** C14 (Explain pointers and pointers to pointers using code)


**** *_Write code for pointer and use that code to explain pointers in your own words_*

#+BEGIN_SRC c
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    char *str = "Hello";
    while (*str != *"\0") {
        printf("Pointer Location: %p, Remaining Letters: %s\n", str, str);
        str++;
    }
}
#+END_SRC

If you run the code above it will output something similar to the following:
#+BEGIN_SRC
Pointer Location: 0x402008, Remaining Letters: Hello
Pointer Location: 0x402009, Remaining Letters: ello
Pointer Location: 0x40200a, Remaining Letters: llo
Pointer Location: 0x40200b, Remaining Letters: lo
Pointer Location: 0x40200c, Remaining Letters: o
#+END_SRC

As you can see we're progressively incrementing the pointer location by one and outputting the
remaining letters from the current pointer location to the end of the string until we hit the
=NULL= character.

The line:
~char *str = "Hello";~
is really a pointer to some location that starts with the letter =H= and ends with a =NULL=
character, =\0=.

By incrementing the pointer by one, we're moving the location it's /pointing/ at by one. After
the first iteration through the while loop the ~*str~ pointer points at the letter ~e~. After
the second iteration, ~*str~ points at ~l~, after the third iteration, ~l~, and so on.

In reality a pointer is something that /points/ to a place in memory. It doesn't contain a
value itself, it merely points to where a value is stored. Hence why the output has the weird
hex codes for =Pointer Location= like =0x402008=. That hex code is a location in memory known
as a /memory address/ that ~*str~, the pointer, points to.


**** *_Write a code for pointer to pointer and use that code to explain pointer to pointer in your own words_*

A pointer to pointer can be seen in the following code:
#+BEGIN_SRC c
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    int some_integer = 106;
    int *pointer = &some_integer;
    int **pointer_to_pointer = &pointer;
    printf("Value: %d\nPointer: %p\nPointer to Pointer: %p\n", some_integer, pointer, pointer_to_pointer);
}
#+END_SRC

When we run the above it will output (pointer values may vary):
#+BEGIN_SRC
Value: 106
Pointer: 0x7ffc87ea34d4
Pointer to Pointer: 0x7ffc87ea34c8
#+END_SRC

Notice that the ~pointer~ variable has a different address it points to than
~pointer_to_pointer~.

The ~pointer~ variable points to the memory location of ~some_integer~ and the
~pointer_to_pointer~ variable points to the memory location of where the ~pointer~ variable is
stored.

With the above in mind, we can then think of a pointer to a pointer as a double indirection.
See the following diagram for what this effectively "looks" like:
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
Pointer to Pointer ----> Pointer ----> Value
#+END_EXAMPLE

Thus, if we only had the variable ~pointer_to_pointer~ we could access the value all the
pointers ultimately point to with a multiple dereference like so:
#+BEGIN_SRC c
#include <stdio.h>

int main() {
    int some_integer = 106;
    int *pointer = &some_integer;
    int **pointer_to_pointer = &pointer;
    printf("Deref'd Value from Pointer to Pointer: %d\n", **pointer_to_pointer);
}
#+END_SRC

Which will output:
#+BEGIN_SRC
Deref'd Value from Pointer to Pointer: 106
#+END_SRC