C Language - Overview

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C is a general-purpose, high-level language that was originally developed by Dennis M. Ritchie to develop the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs. C was originally first implemented on the DEC PDP-11 computer in 1972.

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie produced the first publicly available description of C, now known as the K&R standard.

 

 

The UNIX operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX application programs have been written in C. C has now become a widely used professional language for various reasons −

  • 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. 
  • Today's most popular Linux OS and RDBMS MySQL have been written in C.

 

Why use C?

C was initially used for system development work, particularly the programs that make-up the operating system. C was adopted as a system development language because it produces code that runs nearly as fast as the code written in assembly language. Some examples of the use of C might be −

  • Operating Systems 
  • Language Compilers 
  • Assemblers
  • Text Editors 
  • Print Spoolers 
  • Network 
  • Drivers 
  • Modern 
  • Programs 
  • Databases 
  • Language Interpreters 
  • Utilities

 

Programs

A C program can vary from 3 lines to millions of lines and it should be written into one or more text files with extension ".c"; for example, hello.c. You can use "vi""vim" or any other text editor to write your C program into a file.

This tutorial assumes that you know how to edit a text file and how to write source code inside a program file.



About the author

Cyber_Boy

doing software engineering
love to learn new things and explore them
particular experience of website designs and logo, t-shirt designs

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