Carnegie Mellon
Programming in C & Living in Unix
15-213: Introduction to Computer Systems
Recitation 6: Monday, Sept. 30, 2013
Marjorie Carlson
Section A
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Weekly Update

Buffer Lab is due Tuesday (tomorrow), 11:59PM
 This is another lab you don’t want to waste your late days on.

Cache Lab is out Tuesday (tomorrow), 11:59 PM
 Due Thursday October 10th
 Cache Lab has two parts.
Write a 200- to 300-line C program that simulates the
behavior of cache. (Let the coding in C begin!)
2. Optimize a small matrix transpose function in order to
minimize the number of cache misses.
Next recitation will address part 2. For part 1, pay close
attention in class this week. 
1.

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Agenda

Living in Unix
 Beginner
The Command Line
 Basic Commands
 Pipes & Redirects
 Intermediate
 More Commands
 The Environment
 Shell Scripting


Programming in C
 Refresher
 Compiling
 Hunting Memory Bugs
GDB
 Valgrind

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“In the Beginning was the Command Line…”

Command Line Interface
 “Provides a means of communication between a user and a
computer that is based solely on textual input and output.”

Shell
 A shell is a program that reads and executes the commands
entered on the command line. It provides “an interface between
the user and the internal parts of the operating system (at the very
core of which is the kernel).”
 The original UNIX shell is sh (the Bourne shell).
 Many other versions exist: bash, csh, etc.
The Linux Information Project: Shell
The Linux Information Project: Command Line
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Unix – Beginner: Basic Commands
Moving Around
Manipulating Files
ls
List directory contents
mv
Move (rename) files
cd
Change working directory
cp
Copy files (and directories with “-r”)
pwd
Display present working directory
rm
Remove files (or directories with “-r”)
ln
Make links between files/directories
cat
Concatenate and print files
mkdir
Make directories
chmod
Change file permission bits
Working Remotely
Looking Up Commands
ssh
Secure remote login program
man
Interface to online reference manuals
sftp
Secure remote file transfer program
which
Shows the full path of shell commands
scp
Secure remote file copy program
locate
Find files by name
Managing Processes
Other Important Commands
ps
Report current processes status
echo
Display a line of text
kill
Terminate a process
exit
Cause the shell to exit
jobs
Report current shell’s job status
history
Display the command history list
fg (bg)
Run jobs in foreground (background) who
Show who is logged on the system
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Quick Aside: Using the rm Command





rm ./filename – deletes file “filename” in current dir.
rm ./*ame – deletes all files in the current directory that
end in “ame.”
rm –r ./* – deletes all files and directories inside the
current directory.
rm -r ./directory – deletes all files inside the given
directory and the directory itself.
sudo rm –rvf /* – deletes the entire hard drive.
DO NOT DO THIS!!!
 sudo runs the command as root, allowing you to delete anything.
 -v (verbose) flag will list all the files being deleted.
 -f (force) flag prevents it from asking for confirmation before
deleting important files.
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Quick Aside: Man Page Sections

man foo prints the manual page for the foo, where foo is
any user command, system call, C library function, etc.

However, some programs, utilities, and functions have the
same name, so you have to specify which section you want
(e.g., man 3 printf gets you the man page for the C
library function printf, not the Unix command printf).

How do you know which section you want?
 whatis foo
 man –f foo
 man –k foo lists all man pages mentioning “foo.”
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Unix – Beginner: Pipes & Redirects



A pipe (|) between two commands sends the first
command’s output to the second command as its input.
A redirect (< or >) does basically the same thing, but with a
file rather than a process as the input or output.
Remember this slide? 
 Option 1: Pipes
$ cat exploitfile | ./hex2raw | ./bufbomb -t andrewID
 Option 2: Redirects
$ ./hex2raw < exploitfile > exploit-rawfile
$ ./bufbomb -t andrewID < exploit-rawfile
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Agenda

Living in Unix
 Beginner
The Command Line
 Basic Commands
 Pipes & Redirects
 Intermediate
 More Commands
 The Environment
 Shell Scripting


Programming in C
 Refresher
 Compiling
 Hunting Memory Bugs
GDB
 Valgrind

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Unix – Intermediate: More Commands
Transforming Text
Useful with Other Commands
cut
Remove sections from each line of screen
files (or redirected text)
Screen manager with terminal
emulation
sed
Stream editor for filtering and
transforming text
sudo
Execute a command as another user
(typically root)
tr
Translate or delete characters
sleep
Delay for a specified amount of time
Archiving
Looking Up Commands
zip
Package and compress files
alias
Define or display aliases
tar
Tar file creation, extraction and
manipulation
export
(setenv)*
Exposes variables to the shell
environment and its following
commands
Manipulating File Attributes
Searching Files and File Content
touch
Change file timestamps (creates
empty file, if nonexistent)
find
Search for files in a directory hierarchy
umask
Set file mode creation mask
grep
Print lines matching a pattern
* – Bash uses export. Csh uses setenv.
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Unix – Intermediate: Environment Variables

Your shell’s environment is a set of variables, including
information such as your username, your home directory,
even your language.
 env lists all your environment variables.
 echo $VARIABLENAME prints a specific one.


$PATH is a colon-delimited list of directories to search for
executables.
Variables can be set in config files like .login or
.bashrc, or by scripts, in which case the script must use
export (bash) or setenv (csh) to export changes to the
scope of the shell.
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Unix – Intermediate: Shell Scripting




Shell scripting is a powerful tool that lets you integrate
command line tools quickly and easily to solve complex
problems.
Shell scripts are written in a very simple, interpreted
language. The simplest shells scripts are simply a list of
commands to execute.
Shell scripting syntax is not at all user-friendly, but shell
scripting remains popular for its real power.
Teaching shell scripting is depth is beyond the scope of this
course – for more information, check out Kesden’s old 15123 lectures 3, 4 and 5.
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Unix – Intermediate: Shell Scripting

To write a shell script:
 Open your preferred editor.
 Type #!/bin/sh. When you run the script, this will tell the




OS that what follows is a shell script.
Write the relevant commands.
Save the file. (You may want its extension to be .sh.)
Right now it’s just a text file – not an executable. You need to
chmod +x foo.sh it to make it executable.
Now run it as ./foo.sh!
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Unix – Intermediate: Shell Scripting
hello.sh
hello.sh with variables
#!/bin/sh
#!/bin/sh
# Prints “Hello, world.” to STDOUT
echo “Hello, world.”
str=“Hello, world.”
echo $str # Also prints “Hello, world.”


Anything after a ‘#’ is a comment.
Variables



Setting a variable takes the form ‘varName=VALUE’.
 There CANNOT be any spaces to the left and right of the “=“.
Evaluating a variable takes the form “$varName”.
Shell scripting is syntactically subtle. (Unquoted strings,
“quoted strings”, ‘single-quoted strings’ and `back quotes`
all mean different things!)
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Agenda

Living in Unix
 Beginner
The Command Line
 Basic Commands
 Pipes & Redirects
 Intermediate
 More Commands
 The Environment
 Shell Scripting


Programming in C
 Refresher
 Compiling
 Hunting Memory Bugs
GDB
 Valgrind

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C – Refresher: Things to Remember

If you allocate it, free it.
int *array= malloc(5 * sizeof(int));
…
free(array);

If you use Standard C Library functions that involve
pointers, make sure you know if you need to free it. (This
will be relevant in proxylab.)
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C – Refresher: Things to Remember

There is no String type. Strings are just NULL-terminated
char arrays.

Setting pointers to NULL after freeing them is a good habit,
so is checking if they are equal to NULL.

Global variables are evil, but if you must use make sure you
use extern where appropriate.

Define functions with prototypes, preferably in a header
file, for simplicity and clarity.
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C – Refresher: Command Line Arguments

If you want to pass arguments on the command line to
your C functions, your main function’s parameters must be
int main(int argc, char **argv)
 argc is the number of arguments. (Always ≥ 1)
 argv is an array of char*s (more or less an array of
strings) corresponding to the command line input.
 argv[0] is always the name of the program.
 The rest of the array are the arguments, parsed on
space.
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C – Refresher: Command Line Arguments

$ ls –l private

argc = 3

argv = {“ls”, “-l”, “etc”}
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C – Refresher: Headers & Libraries


Header files make your
functions available to other
source files.
Implementation in .c, and
declarations in .h.
 forward declarations
 struct prototypes
 #defines

It should be wrapped in
#ifndef LINKEDLIST_H
#define LINKEDLIST_H
...
#endif
int bitNor(int, int);
int test_bitNor(int, int);
int isNotEqual(int, int);
int test_isNotEqual(int, int);
int anyOddBit();
int test_anyOddBit();
int rotateLeft(int, int);
int test_rotateLeft(int, int);
int bitParity(int);
int test_bitParity(int);
int tmin();
int test_tmin();
int fitsBits(int, int);
int test_fitsBits(int, int);
int rempwr2(int, int);
int test_rempwr2(int, int);
int addOK(int, int);
int test_addOK(int, int);
int isNonZero(int);
int test_isNonZero(int);
int ilog2(int);
int test_ilog2(int);
unsigned float_half(unsigned);
unsigned test_float_half(unsigned);
unsigned float_twice(unsigned);
unsigned test_float_twice(unsignned);
bits.h
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C – Refresher: Headers & Libraries

#include <*.h> - Used for including header files found
in the C include path: standard C libraries.

#include “*.h” – Used for including header files in the
same directory.

There are command-line compiler flags to control where
header files are searched for, but you shouldn’t need to
worry about that.
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C – Refresher: “Reverse” Demo

reverse takes arguments from the command line and
prints each of them backwards.
It calls reverse_strdup.

To compile:

gcc –Wall –reverse.c –reverse_strdup.c –o reverse
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Agenda

Living in Unix
 Beginner
The Command Line
 Basic Commands
 Pipes & Redirects
 Intermediate
 More Commands
 The Environment
 Shell Scripting


Programming in C
 Refresher
 Compiling
 Hunting Memory Bugs
GDB
 Valgrind

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C – Compiling: Command Line
gcc

GNU project C and C++ compiler
When compiling C code, all dependencies must be
specified.
 Remember how we just compiled?
gcc –Wall –reverse.c –reverse_strdup.c –o reverse

This will not compile:
gcc –Wall –reverse.c –o reverse
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C – Compiling: Command Line
gcc

GNU project C and C++ compiler
gcc does not requires these flags, but they encourage
people to write better C code.
Useful Flags
-Wall
Enables all construction warnings
-Wextra
Enables even more warnings not enabled by Wall
-Werror
Treat all warnings as Errors
-pedantic
Issue all mandatory diagnostics listed in C standard
-ansi
Compiles code according to 1989 C standards
-g
Produces debug information (GDB uses this information)
-O1
Optimize
-O2
Optimize even more
-o filename
Names output binary file “filename”
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C – Compiling: Makefiles
Make
GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs

Projects can get very complicated very fast, and it can take
a long time to have GCC recompile the whole project for a
small change.

Makefiles are designed to solve this problem; make
recompiles only the parts of the project that have changed
and links them to those that haven’t changed.

Makefiles commonly separate compilation (.c  .o) and
linking (.o’s  executable).
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C – Compiling: Makefiles
Make

GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs
Makefiles consist of one or more rules in the following
form.
Makefile Rule Format
target : source(s)
[TAB]command
[TAB]command
Makefile for “gcc foo.c bar.c baz.c –o myapp”
myapp: foo.o bar.o baz.o
gcc foo.o bar.o baz.o –o myapp
foo.o: foo.c foo.h
gcc –c foo.c
bar.o: bar.c bar.h
gcc –c bar.c
baz.o: baz.c baz.h
gcc –c baz.c
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C – Compiling: Makefiles
Make
GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs

Comments are any line beginning with ‘#’

The first line of each command must be a TAB.

If you want help identifying dependencies, you can try:
 gcc –MM foo.c outputs foo’s dependencies to the console.
 makedepend adds dependencies to the Makefile for you, if you
already have one. E.g., foo.c bar.c baz.c .
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C – Compiling: Makefiles
Make

GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs
Use macros – similar to shell variables – to avoid retyping
the same stuff for every .o file.
Makefile Rule Format
CC = gcc
CCOPT = -g –DDEBUG –DPRINT
#CCOPT = -02
foo.o: foo.c foo.h
$(CC) $(CCOPT) –c foo.c

For more information on Makefiles, check out Kesden’s old
15-123 lecture 16.
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Agenda

Living in Unix
 Beginner
The Command Line
 Basic Commands
 Pipes & Redirects
 Intermediate
 More Commands
 The Environment
 Shell Scripting


Programming in C
 Refresher
 Compiling
 Hunting Memory Bugs
GDB
 Valgrind

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C – Hunting Memory Bugs: GDB





Useful for debugging the occasional easy segfault (among
other things!).
You’re used to using disas and stepi/nexti to look at
and step through Assembly.
If you compile with –g, you can use list and step/next
to look at and step through the C, too.
This even works after you’ve segfaulted!
Other useful commands:
 where (print function stack and lines)
 up/down (traverse the function stack)
 display/print variables (like you do now with registers).
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C – Hunting Memory Bugs: Valgrind
valgrind
A suite of tools for debugging and profiling programs

Great for finding memory problems in C programs. Has a
ton of tools: memcheck, leakfind, cachegrind.

Valgrind’s memcheck tool can:
 Track memory leaks & (definitely/possibly) lost blocks
 Track origin for uninitialized values
 Tell you what line of code seems to have been the problem

Syntax (including the verbose flag):
valgrind --tool=memcheck -v ./myprogram args
valgrind –-tool=leak-check=full -v ./myprogram args
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Sources and Useful Links


The Linux Information Project: Command Line Definition
Introduction to Linux: A Hands-On Guide (Garrels)
 You should be comfortable with chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5.


The On-line Manual Database
Kesden’s 15-213: Effective Programming in C and Unix
 Lectures 3, 4 and 5 cover the basics of Shell Scripting.
 Lecture 16 covers Makefiles and lecture 15 covers Valgrind.
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