Many scientific modelling programs are written in C, as it is one of the most popular programming languages used by the HPC community. This course covers the basic concepts of C programming, including syntax, core features, and best practices. It targets students and researchers who have little to no programming background, but would like to learn a low level programming language in depth. Those with some basic C knowledge will also likely learn something new.
Note that although C++ is not covered directly, the vast majority of the content is directly transferable as a starting point for learning C++.
If you have any questions regarding this training, please contact training.nci@anu.edu.au.
Date/Time
Online Workshop
9 am - 12 pm Canberra time
Prerequisites
The training session is driven on the Australian Research Environment (ARE) and Gadi. Attendees are encouraged to review the following pages for background information:
Learning Outcomes
At the completion of this training session, you will be able to:
- Gain confidence reading and writing C code
- Understand pointers, references, and memory management
- Understand basic principles for writing safe, maintainable C code
- Know how to begin a project
- Gain the prerequisite knowledge required to understand the concepts covered in the 'Introduction to OpenMP' and 'Introduction to MPI' NCI HPC Toolkit courses.
Topics Covered
- Syntax
- Control flow (if/for/while/do/switch statements)
- Datatypes
- Operators
- Pointers and references
- Arrays and memory management
- Stack vs heap
- Recursion
- Best practices for performance and memory safety
- User-defined datatypes
- Build system basics (make/cmake)
Overview
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