Introduction

In this program, you will learn to swap two numbers in the C language using logic of addition and subtraction.

To understand this program, you should know about

1. C Data types

2. C programming operators

Program

#include<stdio.h>
int main()
{
float a,b;
printf("Enter two numbers:\n");
scanf("%f %f",&a,&b);
printf("Before swaping numbers are:\na=%f\nb=%f",a,b);


//swapping
a=a-b; // (a'=original_a-original_b)
b=a+b; // (b'=a'+original_b)
a=b-a; // (a''=b'-a')



printf("\nAfter swaping numbers are:\na=%f\nb=%f",a,b);
return 0;
}

Output

Explanation

In the above program, the user is asked to enter two values.

The user enters a=87 and b=45.

Let’s understand the above logic

a=a-b; suppose we are assigning the subtracted value i.e., 87-45=42 to a variable a’.

a’=42. Now, this is the updated value of ‘a’ and will be used in the further code.

b=a+b; ‘b’ is still 45 but ‘a’ is 42 therefore we get 45+42=87. Consider b’=87

b’=87 Now this is the updated value of ‘b’ and will be used in the further code.

a=b-a; here we will use the updated value of ‘a’ and ‘b’. 87-42=45

Therefore, the final value of ‘a’ and ‘b’ is 45 and 87, respectively.

Since values were declared as float, that’s why we have float values in the output.