C Programming/Statements

A statement is a command given to the computer that instructs the computer to take a specific
action, such as display to the screen, or collect input. A computer program is made up of a series of
statements.
In C, a statement can be any of the following:
Labeled Statements
A statement can be preceded by a label. Three types of labels exist in C.
A simple identifier followed by a colon ( :) is a label. Usually, this label is the target of
a goto statement.
Within switch statements, case and default labeled statements exist. A statement of the form
case constant-expression : statement
indicates that control will pass to this statement if the value of the control expression of
the switch statement matches the value of the constant-expression. A statement of the form
default : statement
indicates that control will pass to this statement if the control expression of the switch statement
does not match any of the constant-expressions within the switch statement. If
the default statement is omitted, the control will pass to the statement following
the switch statement.
Compound Statements
A compound statement is the way C groups multiple statements into a single statement. It consists
of multiple statements and declarations within braces (i.e. { and }). In the ANSI C Standard of
1989-1990, a compound statement contained an optional list of declarations followed by an optional
list of statements; in more recent revisions of the Standard, declarations and statements can be
freely interwoven through the code. The body of a function is also a compound statement by rule.
Expression Statements
An expression statement consists of an optional expression followed by a semicolon ( ;). If the
expression is present, the statement may have a value. If no expression is present, the statement is
often called the null statement.
The puts function calls are expressions, so the statements above are expression statements.
Selection Statements[edit]
Three types of selection statements exist in C:
if ( expression ) statement
In this type of if-statement, the sub-statement will only be executed iff the expression is non-zero.
if ( expression ) statement else statement
In this type of if-statement, the first sub-statement will only be executed iff the expression is non-
zero; otherwise, the second sub-statement will be executed. Each elsematches up with the closest
unmatched if, so that the following two snippets of code are not equal:
if (expression)
if (secondexpression) statement1;
else
statement2;
if (expression)
{
if (secondexpression) statement1;
}
else
statement2;
because in the first, the else statement matches up with the if statement that
has secondexpression for a control, but in the second, the braces force the else to match up
with the if that has expression for a control.
Switch statements are also a type of selection statement. They have the format
switch ( expression ) statement
The statement here is usually compound and it contains case-labeled statements and optionally a
default-labeled statement.
Iteration Statements[edit]
C has three kinds of iteration statements. The first is a while-statement with the form
while ( expression ) statement
The substatement of a while runs repeatedly as long as the control expression evaluates to non-zero
at the beginning of each iteration. If the control expression evaluates to zero the first time through,
the substatement may not run at all.
The second is a do-while statement of the form
do statement while ( expression ) ;
This is similar to a while loop, except that the controlling expression is evaluated at the end of the
loop instead of the beginning and consequently the sub-statement must execute at least once.
The third type of iteration statement is the for-statement. In ANSI C 1989, it has the form
for ( expression
opt
; expression
opt
; expression
opt
) statement
In more recent versions of the C standard, a declaration can substitute for the first expression.
The opt subscript indicates that the expression is optional.
The statement
for (e1; e2; e3)
s;
is the rough equivalent of
{
e1;
while (e2)
{
s;
e3;
}
}
except for the behavior of continue statements within s.
The e1 expression represents an initial condition; e2 a control expression; and e3 what to happen
on each iteration of the loop. If e2 is missing, the expression is considered to be non-zero on every
iteration, and only a break statement within s (or a call to a non-returning function such
as exit or abort) will end the loop.
Jump Statements[edit]
C has four types of jump statements. The first, the goto statement, is used sparingly and has the
form
goto identifier ;
This statement transfers control flow to the statement labeled within the given identifier.
The second, the break statement, with the form
break ;
is used within iteration statements and switch statements to pass control flow to the statement
following the while, do-while, for, or switch.
The third, the continue statement, with the form
continue ;
is used within the substatement of interation statements to transfer control flow to the place just
before the end of the substatement. In for statements the iteration expression will then be
executed before the controlling expression is evaluated.
The fourth type of jump statement is the return statement with the form
return expression
opt
;
This statement returns from the function. If the function return type is void, the function may not
return a value; otherwise, the expression represents the value to be returned.