C language syntax specify rules for sequence of characters to be written in C language. The rule specify how character sequence will be grouped together to form tokens. A smallest individual unit in c program is known as C Tokens. Tokens are either keyword, identifier, constant, variable or any symbol which has some meaning in C language. A C program can also be called as collection of various tokens.
Example of C tokens,
int | curly braces { } |
comments | semicolon ; |
Comments
Comments are simple text in your C program that increases readability of programs. Compiler ignore anything written as comment in your program.
Example of comments :
Single line Comment //This is a comment Single line Comment /*This is a comment*/ Multi line Comment /*This is a long and valid comment*/ Wrong Syntax //this is not a valid comment
Some basic syntax rule for C program
- C is a case sensitive language so all C instructions must be written in lower case letter.
- All C statement must be end with a semicolon.
- Whitespace is used in C to describe blanks and tabs.
- Whitespace is required between keywords and identifiers
Tokens in C
A C program consists of various tokens and a token is either a keyword, an identifier, a constant, a string literal, or a symbol. For example, the following C statement consists of five tokens −
printf("Hello, World! \n");
The individual tokens are −
printf ( "Hello, World! \n" ) ;
Semicolons
In a C program, the semicolon is a statement terminator. That is, each individual statement must be ended with a semicolon. It indicates the end of one logical entity.
Given below are two different statements −
printf("Hello, World! \n"); return 0;
Comments
Comments are like helping text in your C program and they are ignored by the compiler. They start with /* and terminate with the characters */ as shown below −
/* my first program in C */
You cannot have comments within comments and they do not occur within a string or character literals.
Identifiers
A C identifier is a name used to identify a variable, function, or any other user-defined item. An identifier starts with a letter A to Z, a to z, or an underscore ‘_’ followed by zero or more letters, underscores, and digits (0 to 9).
C does not allow punctuation characters such as @, $, and % within identifiers. C is a case-sensitive programming language. Thus, Manpowerand manpower are two different identifiers in C. Here are some examples of acceptable identifiers −
mohd zara abc move_name a_123 myname50 _temp j a23b9 retVal
Keywords
The following list shows the reserved words in C. These reserved words may not be used as constants or variables or any other identifier names.
auto | else | long | switch |
break | enum | register | typedef |
case | extern | return | union |
char | float | short | unsigned |
const | for | signed | void |
continue | goto | sizeof | volatile |
default | if | static | while |
do | int | struct | _Packed |
double |
Whitespace in C
A line containing only whitespace, possibly with a comment, is known as a blank line, and a C compiler totally ignores it.
Whitespace is the term used in C to describe blanks, tabs, newline characters and comments. Whitespace separates one part of a statement from another and enables the compiler to identify where one element in a statement, such as int, ends and the next element begins. Therefore, in the following statement −
int age;
there must be at least one whitespace character (usually a space) between int and age for the compiler to be able to distinguish them. On the other hand, in the following statement −
fruit = apples + oranges; // get the total fruit
no whitespace characters are necessary between fruit and =, or between = and apples, although you are free to include some if you wish to increase readability.