well im just starting to learn, i do have a few books which im reading right now.

all im really asking is: what are some VERY basic programs to start with in C?

Try making a hangman game.

Guess the magic number game is always fun.

tic tac toe, ascii graphics.
Very simple text based adventure game.

anything else besides games?  :-X

[code]
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
puts("Hello, world!");
return 0;
}
[/code]

Try making a very simple calculator.

Try making a Battle.net binary bot.

NO WAIT, I mean, how about some basic file programs?
For example try duplicating the "uniq" program from *nix, which removes any duplicate lines from a text file (for more practice, try implementing all its command line options!), and other such similar programs.

Write a spellcheck program, it can use a linear search (ie, just check against every word in the dictionary), and there's plenty of room to improve it later.

Write a program that will find anagrams of a word. Like, if it's given tpos, it will output "pots tops stop opts"  It's not as hard as it sounds, as long as you have a dictionary file.

[quote]Like, if it's given tpos, it will output "pots tops stop opts"[/quote]
That vaguely reminds me of an especially fuzzy topic in MasterMindBot. The "stop" word was especially tricky. :P