Description
CPSC 213 – Assignment 3
Static Variables and C Pointers
Overview
This assignment has three parts. First you will examine two C programs that access arrays and
translate them into assembly language. Then you will answer some questions about C pointer
arithmetic. Finally, you will investigate dynamic arrays and pointers in C by writing a bit of C
code.
As with all assignments, you are encouraged to do this in groups of two. Just be sure that you
both do all of the work, helping each other. Don’t split up the work so that you both do half …
unless, of course, you’re shooting for a 50% on the midterm :).
Questions1 and 2: Writing Assembly [48%]
The code file for this week is found here: www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~cs213/cur/assignments/a3/
code.zip.
This file contains an directory named examples that contains a set of example C programs and
their sm213 assemble-code implementation. The code file also contains two C files named
q1.c and q2.c.
Start with the examples. Carefully examine each of them. Run the assembly versions in the
simulator, step by step. Compare their execution to the C versions. Get comfortable with this
translation from C to assembly and with how assembly executes in the machine.
Now, that you’re getting comfortable, take the first of the C files that don’t have assembly,
q1.c, and produce your own sm213 file, q1.s, that does what this program does; just the parts
of it that are indicated in the C file. Note that you can run the C program, specifying input values
on the command line to see what the program should do. In the simulator you’ll enter the inputs
directly in the memory locations of variables and you’ll examine the output the same way.
Every line of your assembly file must have a comment. The comment should explain what the
line does by referencing C syntax whenever possible. For example, if an assembly instruction
loads the value of a variable into a register, the comment should name that variable. Do the same
for the other C file.
Be sure to end your programs with a “halt” instruction so that the simulated CPU stops when it
reaches the end of your program. If you don’t do this, then it will keep running, interpreting
whatever if finds in memory as instructions, probably doing very strange things.
We suggest that you start this by translating only the first line of C into assembly. Then, test this
assembly in the simulator. Be sure it works, then add the second line and repeat. This is the best
way to implement any program. You should try to almost always have something that runs and
that you’ve tested. Make small changes and re-test. Don’t try to write the whole then and then
test it.
Now do the same for q2.c, translating it into q2.s.
How to Compile a C program
A C program consists of one or more files with extensions “.c” or “.h”. Files ending in “.c” are C
source code. Files ending in “.h” are header (i.e., interface) files. Every program has at least one
“.c” file. Some will use multiple “.c” files and the “.h” files will describe the interface each of
them provides to the other. To import an interface, a “.c” file will include initial lines of the form
‘#include “foo.h”’. In this assignment, every program consists of a single “.c” file and so
there are no “.h” files. Subsequent assignments will be more complex.
There are many dialects of C out in the wild. In this course we will use the 2011 GNU dialect,
which is common (and the default on MacOS, but not on Linux). Dialects differ slightly in
syntax and so you have to tell the compiler which dialect you are intending to use. You do this
by adding the string “-std=gnu11” as a compiler option (note 11 is eleven, as in 2011).
Another thing you have to tell the compiler is the name of the program you want it to create.
You do this with the “-o foo” option (to make a program called foo). If you don’t include
this option, the compiler places the output in a file called a.out.
So, lets say you want to compile e1.c to produce an executable named e1. You would type the
following at the command line.
gcc -std=gnu11 -o e1 e1.c
Questions 3-5 [16%]
Answer These Questions
Place your answers in files named q3.txt., q4.txt, and q5.txt. Note that if you aren’t sure
of the answers, you can always write C program and have it tell you the answer.
Assume that the array a is declared and initialized like this:
int a[10] = {0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9};
3. What is the value of: *(a+3)?
4. What is the value of: &a[7] – &a[2]?
5. What is the value of: *(a + (&a[7]-a+2))?
Question 6 [36%]
Overview
In http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~cs213/cur/assignments/a3/code.zip, you will find a file named
bubble_sort_static.c that takes as input up to 4 integers on the command line and uses
the Bubble Sort algorithm to sort them.
You compile this program like this (again that’s “gnu eleven”)
gcc -std=gnu11 -o bubble_sort_static bubble_sort_static.c
You run it like this:
./bubble_sort_static 78 3 43 1
Read this C file carefully.
Just like q1.c and q2.c, this program’s main function has two parameters: argc and argv.
In Java it is similar: main has one parameter, an array of strings. That’s what argc and argv
are: argc is the number of stings found on the command line that ran the program (5 in the case
of the example) and argv is a dynamic array that contains each of these strings. In C, a string is
simply an array of char (i.e., a char*) that is terminated by the first null (i.e., 0) in the array.
You will also see that main copies these values into a static global array named val. This array
is statically assigned a length of 4 and so the input is limited to 4 numbers.
Finally, once main has copied the input values into val, it calls sort to sort the values and
then prints out the result.
Step 1: Modify the C program to use a dynamic array [18%]
The first step is to create a new C program named bubble_sort_dynamic.c that removes
the static-array limitation of the original version. The only change you need to make is to turn
val into a dynamic array and to allow the program to sort arbitrary lists of integers provided on
the command line (e.g., more than 4).
Recall that you need to allocate dynamic arrays dynamically by calling the procedure malloc.
For example to allocate an array of 10 shorts you say:
short s* = malloc (10 * 2);
Be sure to test your program.
Step 2: C Pointers [18%]
Now, create another C program called bubble_sort_awesome.c that extends your earlier
work to remove all square brackets from your program. All access to the arrays must be made
using pointer arithmetic and the dereference operator (i.e., “*”). Test this too.
What to Hand In
Use the handin program; the command-line version is strongly preferred.
The assignment directory is ~/cs213/a3, it should contain the following plain-text files.
1. README.txt that contains the name and student number of you and your partner
2. PARTNER.txt containing your partner’s CS login id and nothing else (i.e., the 4- or 5-
digit id in the form a0z1). Your partner should not submit anything.
3. q1.s and q2.s, your code for Questions 1 and 2.
4. q3.txt., q4.txt., and q5.txt with your answers to Questions 3-5.
5. bubble_sort_dynamic.c and bubble_sort_awesome.c.
