CS31 Weekly Lab Week 1

gdb, printf, computer teardown
Use the setup31 script to create the appropriate directories for your first weeklylab folder and the lab 01 homework folder
  [~]$ cd
  [~]$ setup31 weeklylab
  [~]$ setup31 labs/01
  [~]$ cd ~/cs31/weeklylab
  [~]$ mkdir week01
  [~]$ cd week01
  [~]$ cp ~adanner/public/cs31/week01/* ./
  [~]$  ls
  Makefile  printtypes.c	testprog.c
  [~]$ cd ~/cs31/labs/01
  [~]$ cp ~adanner/public/cs31/labs/01/* ./
  [~]$ ls
  Makefile lab1.c
We will be using the version control system git to manage code changes and submit assignments. As a quick check, please try the following.
  [~]$ cd ~/cs31/weeklylab/week01
  [~]$ git add Makefile printtypes.c testprog.c
  [~]$ git commit -m "week1 in lab practice"
  [~]$ git push

Goals for this week:

  1. Quick overview of Bit-wise operators.
  2. Learn basic C types and printf formats (on your own)
  3. Learn how to use gdb print different representations and to convert between representations
  4. Discover the parts of a computer
C bit-wise operators
Bit-wise Operations:  AND (&) , OR (|), NOT (~), XOR(^)

        A       B       A & B     A | B     ~A         A ^ B
        ------------------------------------------------------
        0       0         0         0        1           0
        0       1         0         1        1           1
        1       0         0         1        0           1
        1       1         1         1        0           0


smallest unit is really a byte so do bitwise ops on some number of bytes

     01010101           01101010      10101010        ~10101111
   | 00100001         & 10111011    ^ 01101001         ---------
   -----------         ----------     ---------        01010000
     01110101           00101010      11000011


Bit shift:

   val  << amt   
   val  >> amt

   10110111 << 2   is 11011100

     000111 >> 2   is 00000001

signed (arithmetic) right shift: keeps sign bit

  100011111 >> 2   is 111000111

in a C program, one would usually shift a variable value:

int y = 0, x = 10234;
    y = x >>2;
C types and printf
The file printtypes.c has some examples of printf format strings for printing out values of different types. We are not going to spend much time looking at this today, but use it as a reference for printing out values in the lab 1 assignment. Below is just a little info about printf and C types.

C has many different types for storing integer values. These types differ by the number of bytes they use to store values, and by whether or not they store both positive and negative values.

1 byte: 2 bytes: 4 bytes: 4 or 8 bytes:
(depends on arch)
8 bytes:
char short int long long long
unsigned char unsigned short unsigned int unsigned long unsigned long long

When you allocate a variable of a specific type, you get a storage location of the appropriate number of bytes associated with that variable name:

int x;             // 4 bytes of storage space to store a signed integer value 
unsigned char ch;  // 1 byte of storage space to store an unsigned integer value

printf formatted output

printf has different placeholders for specifying how a value should be printed (how its series of bytes be interpreted). See the printtypes.c for examples. Here is a brief summary:
### Specifying the numeric representation:
   %d: print out value in decimal  (base 10)
   %u: print out value in unsigned decimal  (base 10)
   %x: print out value in hexidecimal  (base 16) 
   %o: print out value in octal (base 8)
   (there is no formatting option to display the value in binary)

### Specifying the type:
   %d:   int     (to print numeric values of int, short, and char args)
   %ld:  long int
   %lld: long long int
   %u:   unsigned 
   %lu:  long unsigned
   %llu: long long unsigned
   %p:   an address value 
   %f:   float or double 
   %lf:  double 
   %e:   float or double in scientific notation 
   %g:   float in either %e or %f format 
   %c:   char (ex. 'x') 
   %s:   string  (ex.  "hello there")

### Specifying field width: 
   %5d: print out the value in decimal in a field of with 5
   %-5d: print out the value in decimal in a field of with 5, left justified
   %6.4f: print out a float in a field with of 6 with a precision of 4 

C debugger: gdb
The GNU debugger, gdb, is the C debugger we will use in this class. Usually, we will use gdb to debug a program, but this week we are going to use gdb as calculator.

gdb's print command can be used to print the value of a expression in different representations (binary, decimal, hex); you can use it as a simple calculator to verify answers to hex, binary, and decimal arithmetic. For this use of gdb, we don't have to have an executable to run gdb on. We can just run gdb, and then call its print command:

$ gdb 
# print an expression in different representations:
# (/t in binary, /x  in hexidecimal, default is decimal):
(gdb) print/t 1234       # print/t: print decimal value 1234 in binary format
                         # p is shorthand for print
(gdb) p/x 1234           # p/x: print value in hexidecimal format
(gdb) p/d 1234           # p/d: print value in decimal format (the default)

# 0x is the prefix for a hexidecimal literals
# 0b is the prefix for a binary literals
# no prefix:  for decimal literals
(gdb) p 0xabf1           # print the hex value abf1 as decimal 
(gdb) p 0b0101           # print the binary value 0101 as decimal 
(gdb) p/t 0x1234         # print the hex value 0x1234 as binary
                         # (note: leading 0's are not printed out)
(gdb) p/d 0b1010         # print the binary value 01010 as decimal
(gdb) p/x  0b10100000    # print a binary value in hex  
(gdb) p/t 0b101001001 + 0xa2  # add a binary and a hex value, print result in binary

# you can re-cast a value as a specific C type:
(gdb) p/t (char)(12)    # tell gdb that the value 12 is a char (1 byte) and print as binary
(gdb) p/t (char)(-12)   # print -12 char value (1 byte) in binary


Computer Teardown
Log out, and we are going to walk over to the Robot Lab. You have been randomly assigned to one of four groups. Each group is assigned a computer that you can take apart. The goal is to find as many parts of a computer as you can. We have tools available to remove parts from your computer, and here are a few links that may be helpful:

Try to identify some of the following:

Before leaving lab, please clean-up all spare parts, screws, etc. that you have removed by puting them in the boxes. You do not need to put the cases in the boxes, just all loose parts. CPU thermal glue is toxic, so just to be extra safe I'd recommend washing your hands after lab today.