Topics to be covered in CITS2002 Systems Programming

• An introduction to the ISO-C programming language
  The structure of a C program, basic datatypes and variables, compiling and linking.
  We will focus on the C11 language standard.

• An introduction to Operating Systems
  A brief history of operating systems, the role of contemporary operating systems, the relationship between programming languages, programs, and operating systems.

• An overview of computer hardware components
  The processor and its registers, the memory hierarchy, input and output (I/O) and storage components.

• C programs in greater detail
  Arrays and character strings, user-defined types and structures, how the computer hardware represents data, functions, parameter passing and return values.

• Executing and controlling processes
  Creating and terminating processes, a program's runtime environment, command-line arguments, accessing operating system services from C.

• Managing memory
  Allocating physical memory to processes, sharing memory between multiple processes, allocating and managing memory in C programs.

• Files and their use in programs
  The file management system, file allocation methods, file and directory operations and attributes, file input and output (I/O), raw and formatted I/O, unbuffered and buffered I/O functions.