Basic Constructs

In this chapter, we’ll look at the most basic and simple constructs that are part of nearly all imperative/OOP languages out there.

Contents:

• Global Variables
• Local Variables
• Constants
  • Constant Expressions
• Structures
  • Nested Structures
  • Incomplete Structure Types
  • Accessing a Structure Member
• Casts
  • Bitwise Casts
  • Zero-Extending Casts (Unsigned Upcasts)
  • Sign-Extending Casts (Signed Upcasts)
  • Truncating Casts (Signed and Unsigned Downcasts)
  • Floating-Point Extending Casts (Float Upcasts)
  • Floating-Point Truncating Casts (Float Downcasts)
  • Pointer-to-Integer Casts
  • Integer-to-Pointer Casts
  • Address-Space Casts (Pointer Casts)
• Function Definitions and Declarations
  • Simple Public Functions
  • Simple Private Functions
  • Function Prototypes
  • Functions with a Variable Number of Parameters
  • Function Overloading
  • Struct by Value as Parameter or Return Value
  • Exception-Aware Functions
  • Function Pointers
• Unions
  • Tagged Unions