C Language

 

Introduction of C Language

C is a general-purpose, procedural programming language. It was initially developed by Dennis Ritchie in the year 1972 at the Bell Telephone Laboratories . It was mainly developed as a system programming language to write an operating system. The main features of C language include low-level access to memory, a simple set of keywords, and clean style, these features make C language suitable for system programmings like an operating system or compiler development.

Basic Function of C Language

C programming language is a MUST for students and working professionals to become a great Software Engineer specially when they are working in Software Development Domain. I will list down some of the key advantages of learning C Programming:

• Easy to learn

• Structured language

• It produces efficient programs

• It can handle low-level activities

• It can be compiled on a variety of computer platforms

Facts about C

• C was invented to write an operating system called UNIX.

• C is a successor of B language which was introduced around the early 1970s.

• The language was formalized in 1988 by the American National Standard Institute (ANSI).

• The UNIX OS was totally written in C.

• Today C is the most widely used and popular System Programming Language.

• Most of the state-of-the-art software have been implemented using C.

History of C Programming

The C programming language came out of Bell Labs in the early 1970s. According to the Bell Labs paper The Development of the C Language by Dennis Ritchie, “The C programming language was devised in the early 1970s as a system implementation language for the nascent Unix operating system. Derived from the  language BCPL, it evolved a type structure; created on a tiny machine as a tool to improve a meager programming environment.” Originally, Ken Thompson, a Bell Labs employee, desired to make a programming language for the new Unix platform. Thompson modified the BCPL system language and created B. However, not many utilities were ever written in B due to its slow nature and inability to take advantage of PDP-11 features in the operating system. This led to Ritchie improving on B, and thus creating C.

Language	Year	Developed By
Algol	1960	International Group
BCPL	1967	Martin Richard
B	1970	Ken Thompson
Traditional C	1972	Dennis Ritchie
K & R C	1978	Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie
ANSI C	1989	ANSI Committee
ANSI/ISO C	1990	ISO Committee
C99	1999	Standardization Committee

Features of C Language

C is the widely used language. It provides many features that are given below.

1. Simple
2. Machine Independent or Portable
3. Mid-level programming language
4. structured programming language
5. Rich Library
6. Memory Management
7. Fast Speed
8. Pointers
9. Recursion
10. Extensible

Flow Control Structure of Programming

Control Structure