Overview of C Language

The C programming language was developed by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Laboratories in 1972. C evolved from two earlier languages called the BPCL and B which were also developed at Bell Laboratories.

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

C is a general-purpose structured programming language. It has a rich set of data types and has a syntax that uses the English language keywords. Its features categorize it as a high-level language. C has additional features that allow it to be used at the lower level, thus bridging the gap between the machine
language and the conventional high-level languages. This flexibility allows C to be widely used for systems programming.

An important characteristic of C is that the programs are highly portable. This is because C implements most computer dependent functions as its library functions. Every version of C is accompanied by its own set of library functions. The library functions are relatively standardized. Therefore, most C programs can be processed on many different computers with little or no alteration.

In the year 1988 'C' programming language standardized by ANSI (American national standard institute), that version is called ANSI-C. In the year of 2000 'C' programming Language standardized by 'ISO' that version is called C-99.

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

DEVELOPING PROGRAMS IN C

There are mainly three steps:

            1. Writing the C program

            2. Compile the program and

            3. Executing it.

For these steps, there requires some software components, namely an operating system, a text editor, and the C compiler, assembler, and linker.