# C Program to find the factorial of a number

Last updated on July 27, 2020

The following C program find the factorial of a number:

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 /******************************************************* * Program to find the factorial of a number ********************************************************/ #include int main() { int n, i; unsigned long int fact = 1; printf("Enter a number: "); scanf("%d", &n); for(i = n; i > 0; i--) { fact = fact * i; } printf("%d! = %d", n, fact); return 0; } 

Expected Output 1st run:

 1 2 Enter a number: 5 5! = 120 

2nd run:

 1 2 Enter a number: 8 8! = 40320 

How it works:

Factorial of a number n is defined as:

n! = n * (n-1) * (n-2) * (n-3) * ..... * 2 * 1


For example:

 1 2 5! = 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 120 9! = 9 * 8 * 7 * 6 * 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 362880 

The following table demonstrates what happens at each iteration of the loop (assuming the n = 5):

Iteration fact i
After 1st iteration fact = 1 * 5 = 5 5
After 2nd iteration fact = 5 * 4 = 20 4
After 3rd iteration fact = 20 * 3 = 60 3
After 4th iteration fact = 60 * 2 = 120 2
After 5th iteration fact = 120 * 1 = 120 1