C_(programming_language)

C (programming language)
C (pronounced /ˈsiː/ – like the letter c)[6] is a general-

C
purpose programming language. It was created in the
1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used
and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect
the capabilities of the targeted CPUs. It has found
lasting use in operating systems code (especially in
kernels[7]), device drivers, and protocol stacks, but its
use in application software has been decreasing.[8] C is Logotype used on the cover of the first edition
commonly used on computer architectures that range of The C Programming Language[1]
from the largest supercomputers to the smallest Paradigm Multi-paradigm: imperative
microcontrollers and embedded systems. (procedural), structured
Designed by Dennis Ritchie
A successor to the programming language B, C was
originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between Developer ANSI X3J11 (ANSI C);
1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint
was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix Technical Committee 1) /
SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) /
operating system.[9] During the 1980s, C gradually
WG 14 (Working Group 14)
gained popularity. It has become one of the most
(ISO C)
widely used programming languages,[10][11] with C
compilers available for practically all modern First appeared 1972[2]
computer architectures and operating systems. The Stable release C23 / October 31, 2024
book The C Programming Language, co-authored by
Preview release C2y (N3220) / February 21,
the original language designer, served for many years
2024[3]
as the de facto standard for the language.[12][1] C has
been standardized since 1989 by the American Typing Static, weak, manifest,
National Standards Institute (ANSI) and, subsequently, discipline nominal
jointly by the International Organization for OS Cross-platform
Standardization (ISO) and the International Filename .c, .h
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). extensions
C is an imperative procedural language, supporting Website www.iso.org/standard

/82075.html (https://www.is
structured programming, lexical variable scope, and
o.org/standard/82075.html)
recursion, with a static type system. It was designed to
www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22
be compiled to provide low-level access to memory
/wg14/ (http://www.open-st
and language constructs that map efficiently to
d.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/)
machine instructions, all with minimal runtime
support. Despite its low-level capabilities, the language Major implementations
was designed to encourage cross-platform pcc, GCC, Clang, Intel C, C++Builder,
programming. A standards-compliant C program Microsoft Visual C++, Watcom C
Dialects
Cyclone, Unified Parallel C, Split-C, Cilk, C*
written with portability in mind can be compiled for a Influenced by
wide variety of computer platforms and operating B (BCPL, CPL), ALGOL 68,[4] PL/I, FORTRAN
systems with few changes to its source code.
Influenced
Since 2000, C has consistently ranked among the top Numerous: AMPL, AWK, csh, C++, C--, C#,
four languages in the TIOBE index, a measure of the Objective-C, D, Go, Java, JavaScript, JS++,
popularity of programming languages.[13] Julia, Limbo, LPC, Perl, PHP, Pike,
Processing, Python, Rust, Seed7, V (Vlang),
Vala, Verilog (HDL),[5] Nim, Zig
Overview C Programming at Wikibooks
C is an imperative, procedural language in the ALGOL

tradition. It has a static type system. In C, all executable code is
contained within subroutines (also called "functions", though not
in the sense of functional programming). Function parameters are
passed by value, although arrays are passed as pointers, i.e. the
address of the first item in the array. Pass-by-reference is
simulated in C by explicitly passing pointers to the thing being
referenced. Dennis Ritchie (right), the inventor
of the C programming language,
C program source text is free-form code. Semicolons terminate with Ken Thompson
statements, while curly braces are used to group statements into
blocks.
The C language also exhibits the following characteristics:
The language has a small, fixed number of keywords, including a full set of control flow
primitives: if/else, for, do/while, while, and switch. User-defined names are not
distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil.
It has a large number of arithmetic, bitwise, and logic operators: +,+=,++,&,||, etc.
More than one assignment may be performed in a single statement.
Functions:
Function return values can be ignored, when not needed.
Function and data pointers permit ad hoc run-time polymorphism.
Functions may not be defined within the lexical scope of other functions.
Variables may be defined within a function, with scope.
A function may call itself, so recursion is supported.
Data typing is static, but weakly enforced; all data has a type, but implicit conversions are
possible.
User-defined (typedef) and compound types are possible.
Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct) allow related data elements to be

accessed and assigned as a unit. The contents of whole structs cannot be compared
using a single built-in operator (the elements must be compared individually).
Union is a structure with overlapping members; it allows multiple data types to share the
same memory location.
Array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Whole
arrays cannot be assigned or compared using a single built-in operator. There is no
"array" keyword in use or definition; instead, square brackets indicate arrays
syntactically, for example month[11].
Enumerated types are possible with the enum keyword. They are freely interconvertible
with integers.
Strings are not a distinct data type, but are conventionally implemented as null-
terminated character arrays.
Low-level access to computer memory is possible by converting machine addresses to
pointers.
Procedures (subroutines not returning values) are a special case of function, with an empty
return type void.
Memory can be allocated to a program with calls to library routines.
A preprocessor performs macro definition, source code file inclusion, and conditional
compilation.
There is a basic form of modularity: files can be compiled separately and linked together,
with control over which functions and data objects are visible to other files via static and
extern attributes.
Complex functionality such as I/O, string manipulation, and mathematical functions are
consistently delegated to library routines.
The generated code after compilation has relatively straightforward needs on the underlying
platform, which makes it suitable for creating operating systems and for use in embedded
systems.
While C does not include certain features found in other languages (such as object orientation and
garbage collection), these can be implemented or emulated, often through the use of external libraries
(e.g., the GLib Object System or the Boehm garbage collector).
Relations to other languages

Many later languages have borrowed directly or indirectly from C, including C++, C#, Unix's C shell, D,
Go, Java, JavaScript (including transpilers), Julia, Limbo, LPC, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby,
Rust, Swift, Verilog and SystemVerilog (hardware description languages).[5] These languages have drawn
many of their control structures and other basic features from C. Most of them also express highly similar
syntax to C, and they tend to combine the recognizable expression and statement syntax of C with
underlying type systems, data models, and semantics that can be radically different.
History
Early developments
The origin of C is closely tied to the development of the Unix operating system, originally implemented
in assembly language on a PDP-7 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, incorporating several ideas
from colleagues. Eventually, they decided to port the operating system to a PDP-11. The original PDP-11
version of Unix was also developed in assembly language.[9]
B
Thompson wanted a programming language for Timeline of C language
developing utilities for the new platform. He first tried Informal Official
Year
writing a Fortran compiler, but he soon gave up the idea name standard
and instead created a cut-down version of the recently 1972 first release —
developed systems programming language called BCPL.
1978 K&R C —
The official description of BCPL was not available at the
time,[14] and Thompson modified the syntax to be less 1989, ANSI C, C89, ANSI X3.159-1989
1990 ISO C, C90 ISO/IEC 9899:1990
'wordy' and similar to a simplified ALGOL known as
1999 C99, C9X ISO/IEC 9899:1999
SMALGOL.[15] He called the result B,[9] describing it as
"BCPL semantics with a lot of SMALGOL syntax".[15] 2011 C11, C1X ISO/IEC 9899:2011
Like BCPL, B had a bootstrapping compiler to facilitate 2018 C17, C18 ISO/IEC 9899:2018
porting to new machines.[15] Ultimately, few utilities 2024 C23, C2X ISO/IEC 9899:2024
were written in B because it was too slow and could not
Future C2Y —
take advantage of PDP-11 features such as byte
addressability.
New B and first C release

In 1971 Ritchie started to improve B, to use the features of the more-powerful PDP-11. A significant
addition was a character data type. He called this New B (NB).[15] Thompson started to use NB to write
the Unix kernel, and his requirements shaped the direction of the language development.[15][16] Through
to 1972, richer types were added to the NB language: NB had arrays of int and char. Pointers, the
ability to generate pointers to other types, arrays of all types, and types to be returned from functions
were all also added. Arrays within expressions became pointers. A new compiler was written, and the
language was renamed C.[9]
The C compiler and some utilities made with it were included in Version 2 Unix, which is also known as
Research Unix.[17]
Structures and Unix kernel re-write

At Version 4 Unix, released in November 1973, the Unix kernel was extensively re-implemented in C.[9]
By this time, the C language had acquired some powerful features such as struct types.
The preprocessor was introduced around 1973 at the urging of Alan Snyder and also in recognition of the
usefulness of the file-inclusion mechanisms available in BCPL and PL/I. Its original version provided
only included files and simple string replacements: #include and #define of parameterless macros.
Soon after that, it was extended, mostly by Mike Lesk and then by John Reiser, to incorporate macros
with arguments and conditional compilation.[9]
Unix was one of the first operating system kernels implemented in a language other than assembly.
Earlier instances include the Multics system (which was written in PL/I) and Master Control Program
(MCP) for the Burroughs B5000 (which was written in ALGOL) in 1961. In around 1977, Ritchie and
Stephen C. Johnson made further changes to the language to facilitate portability of the Unix operating
system. Johnson's Portable C Compiler served as the basis for several implementations of C on new
platforms.[16]
K&R C
In 1978 Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of
The C Programming Language.[18] Known as K&R from the initials of its
authors, the book served for many years as an informal specification of
the language. The version of C that it describes is commonly referred to as
"K&R C". As this was released in 1978, it is now also referred to as
C78.[19] The second edition of the book[20] covers the later ANSI C
standard, described below.
K&R introduced several language features:
Standard I/O library

long int data type
unsigned int data type The cover of the book The
C Programming Language,
Compound assignment operators of the form =op (such as =-) first edition, by Brian
were changed to the form op= (that is, -=) to remove the Kernighan and Dennis
semantic ambiguity created by constructs such as i=-10, Ritchie
which had been interpreted as i =- 10 (decrement i by 10)
instead of the possibly intended i = -10 (let i be −10).
Even after the publication of the 1989 ANSI standard, for many years K&R C was still considered the
"lowest common denominator" to which C programmers restricted themselves when maximum
portability was desired, since many older compilers were still in use, and because carefully written K&R
C code can be legal Standard C as well.
In early versions of C, only functions that return types other than int must be declared if used before the
function definition; functions used without prior declaration were presumed to return type int.
For example:
long some_function(); /* This is a function declaration, so the compiler can know the name and return
type of this function. */
/* int */ other_function(); /* Another function declaration. Because this is an early version of C,
there is an implicit 'int' type here. A comment shows where the explicit 'int' type specifier would
be required in later versions. */
/* int */ calling_function() /* This is a function definition, including the body of the code
following in the { curly brackets }. Because no return type is specified, the function implicitly
returns an 'int' in this early version of C. */
{
long test1;
register /* int */ test2; /* Again, note that 'int' is not required here. The 'int' type specifier
*/
/* in the comment would be required in later versions of C. */
/* The 'register' keyword indicates to the compiler that this variable
should */
/* ideally be stored in a register as opposed to within the stack frame.
*/
test1 = some_function();
if (test1 > 1)
test2 = 0;
else
test2 = other_function();
return test2;
}
The int type specifiers which are commented out could be omitted in K&R C, but are required in later
standards.
Since K&R function declarations did not include any information about function arguments, function
parameter type checks were not performed, although some compilers would issue a warning message if a
local function was called with the wrong number of arguments, or if different calls to an external function
used different numbers or types of arguments. Separate tools such as Unix's lint utility were developed
that (among other things) could check for consistency of function use across multiple source files.
In the years following the publication of K&R C, several features were added to the language, supported
by compilers from AT&T (in particular PCC[21]) and some other vendors. These included:
void functions (i.e., functions with no return value)

functions returning struct or union types (previously only a single pointer, integer or float
could be returned)
assignment for struct data types
enumerated types (previously, preprocessor definitions for integer fixed values were used,
e.g. #define GREEN 3)
The large number of extensions and lack of agreement on a standard library, together with the language
popularity and the fact that not even the Unix compilers precisely implemented the K&R specification,
led to the necessity of standardization.[22]
ANSI C and ISO C

During the late 1970s and 1980s, versions of C were implemented for a wide variety of mainframe
computers, minicomputers, and microcomputers, including the IBM PC, as its popularity began to
increase significantly.
In 1983 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formed a committee, X3J11, to establish a
standard specification of C. X3J11 based the C standard on the Unix implementation; however, the non-
portable portion of the Unix C library was handed off to the IEEE working group 1003 to become the
basis for the 1988 POSIX standard. In 1989, the C standard was ratified as ANSI X3.159-1989
"Programming Language C". This version of the language is often referred to as ANSI C, Standard C, or
sometimes C89.
In 1990 the ANSI C standard (with formatting changes) was adopted by the International Organization
for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 9899:1990, which is sometimes called C90. Therefore, the terms
"C89" and "C90" refer to the same programming language.
ANSI, like other national standards bodies, no longer develops the C standard independently, but defers
to the international C standard, maintained by the working group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14. National
adoption of an update to the international standard typically occurs within a year of ISO publication.
One of the aims of the C standardization process was to produce a superset of K&R C, incorporating
many of the subsequently introduced unofficial features. The standards committee also included several
additional features such as function prototypes (borrowed from C++), void pointers, support for
international character sets and locales, and preprocessor enhancements. Although the syntax for
parameter declarations was augmented to include the style used in C++, the K&R interface continued to
be permitted, for compatibility with existing source code.
C89 is supported by current C compilers, and most modern C code is based on it. Any program written
only in Standard C and without any hardware-dependent assumptions will run correctly on any platform
with a conforming C implementation, within its resource limits. Without such precautions, programs may
compile only on a certain platform or with a particular compiler, due, for example, to the use of non-
standard libraries, such as GUI libraries, or to a reliance on compiler- or platform-specific attributes such
as the exact size of data types and byte endianness.
In cases where code must be compilable by either standard-conforming or K&R C-based compilers, the
__STDC__ macro can be used to split the code into Standard and K&R sections to prevent the use on a
K&R C-based compiler of features available only in Standard C.
After the ANSI/ISO standardization process, the C language specification remained relatively static for
several years. In 1995, Normative Amendment 1 to the 1990 C standard (ISO/IEC 9899/AMD1:1995,
known informally as C95) was published, to correct some details and to add more extensive support for
international character sets.[23]
C99
The C standard was further revised in the late 1990s, leading to the publication of ISO/IEC 9899:1999 in
1999, which is commonly referred to as "C99". It has since been amended three times by Technical
Corrigenda.[24]
C99 introduced several new features, including inline functions, several new data types (including long
long int and a complex type to represent complex numbers), variable-length arrays and flexible
array members, improved support for IEEE 754 floating point, support for variadic macros (macros of
variable arity), and support for one-line comments beginning with //, as in BCPL or C++. Many of these
had already been implemented as extensions in several C compilers.
C99 is for the most part backward compatible with C90, but is stricter in some ways; in particular, a
declaration that lacks a type specifier no longer has int implicitly assumed. A standard macro
__STDC_VERSION__ is defined with value 199901L to indicate that C99 support is available. GCC,
Solaris Studio, and other C compilers now support many or all of the new features of C99. The C
compiler in Microsoft Visual C++, however, implements the C89 standard and those parts of C99 that are
required for compatibility with C++11.[25]
In addition, the C99 standard requires support for identifiers using Unicode in the form of escaped
characters (e.g. \u0040 or \U0001f431) and suggests support for raw Unicode names.
C11
Work began in 2007 on another revision of the C standard, informally called "C1X" until its official
publication of ISO/IEC 9899:2011 on December 8, 2011. The C standards committee adopted guidelines
to limit the adoption of new features that had not been tested by existing implementations.
The C11 standard adds numerous new features to C and the library, including type generic macros,
anonymous structures, improved Unicode support, atomic operations, multi-threading, and bounds-
checked functions. It also makes some portions of the existing C99 library optional, and improves
compatibility with C++. The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as 201112L to indicate
that C11 support is available.
C17
C17 is an informal name for ISO/IEC 9899:2018, a standard for the C programming language published
in June 2018. It introduces no new language features, only technical corrections, and clarifications to
defects in C11. The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as 201710L to indicate that C17
support is available.
C23
C23 is an informal name for the current major C language standard revision. It was informally known as
"C2X" through most of its development. C23 was published in October 2024 as ISO/IEC 9899:2024.[26]
The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as 202311L to indicate that C23 support is
available.
C2Y
C2Y is an informal name for the next major C language standard revision, after C23 (C2X), that is hoped
to be released later in the 2020s decade, hence the '2' in "C2Y". An early working draft of C2Y was
released in February 2024 as N3220 by the working group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14.[27]
Embedded C
Historically, embedded C programming requires non-standard extensions to the C language to support
exotic features such as fixed-point arithmetic, multiple distinct memory banks, and basic I/O operations.
In 2008, the C Standards Committee published a technical report extending the C language[28] to address
these issues by providing a common standard for all implementations to adhere to. It includes a number
of features not available in normal C, such as fixed-point arithmetic, named address spaces, and basic I/O
hardware addressing.
Syntax
C has a formal grammar specified by the C standard.[29] Line endings are generally not significant in C;
however, line boundaries do have significance during the preprocessing phase. Comments may appear
either between the delimiters /* and */, or (since C99) following // until the end of the line. Comments
delimited by /* and */ do not nest, and these sequences of characters are not interpreted as comment
delimiters if they appear inside string or character literals.[30]
C source files contain declarations and function definitions. Function definitions, in turn, contain
declarations and statements. Declarations either define new types using keywords such as struct,
union, and enum, or assign types to and perhaps reserve storage for new variables, usually by writing
the type followed by the variable name. Keywords such as char and int specify built-in types. Sections
of code are enclosed in braces ({ and }, sometimes called "curly brackets") to limit the scope of
declarations and to act as a single statement for control structures.
As an imperative language, C uses statements to specify actions. The most common statement is an
expression statement, consisting of an expression to be evaluated, followed by a semicolon; as a side
effect of the evaluation, functions may be called and variables assigned new values. To modify the normal
sequential execution of statements, C provides several control-flow statements identified by reserved
keywords. Structured programming is supported by if ... [else] conditional execution and by do ...
while, while, and for iterative execution (looping). The for statement has separate initialization,
testing, and reinitialization expressions, any or all of which can be omitted. break and continue can
be used within the loop. Break is used to leave the innermost enclosing loop statement and continue is
used to skip to its reinitialisation. There is also a non-structured goto statement which branches directly
to the designated label within the function. switch selects a case to be executed based on the value of
an integer expression. Different from many other languages, control-flow will fall through to the next
case unless terminated by a break.
Expressions can use a variety of built-in operators and may contain function calls. The order in which
arguments to functions and operands to most operators are evaluated is unspecified. The evaluations may
even be interleaved. However, all side effects (including storage to variables) will occur before the next
"sequence point"; sequence points include the end of each expression statement, and the entry to and
return from each function call. Sequence points also occur during evaluation of expressions containing
certain operators (&&, ||, ?: and the comma operator). This permits a high degree of object code
optimization by the compiler, but requires C programmers to take more care to obtain reliable results than
is needed for other programming languages.
Kernighan and Ritchie say in the Introduction of The C Programming Language: "C, like any other
language, has its blemishes. Some of the operators have the wrong precedence; some parts of the syntax
could be better."[31] The C standard did not attempt to correct many of these blemishes, because of the
impact of such changes on already existing software.
Character set
The basic C source character set includes the following characters:
Lowercase and uppercase letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet: a–z, A–Z
Decimal digits: 0–9
Graphic characters: ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? [ \ ] ^ _ { |
} ~
Whitespace characters: space, horizontal tab, vertical tab, form feed, newline
The newline character indicates the end of a text line; it need not correspond to an actual single character,
although for convenience C treats it as such.
Additional multi-byte encoded characters may be used in string literals, but they are not entirely portable.
The latest C standard (C11) allows multi-national Unicode characters to be embedded portably within C
source text by using \uXXXX or \UXXXXXXXX encoding (where X denotes a hexadecimal character),
although this feature is not yet widely implemented.
The basic C execution character set contains the same characters, along with representations for alert,
backspace, and carriage return. Run-time support for extended character sets has increased with each
revision of the C standard.
Reserved words
The following reserved words are case sensitive.
C89 has 32 reserved words, also known as 'keywords', which cannot be used for any purposes other than
those for which they are predefined:
auto extern sizeof

break float static
case for struct
char goto switch
const if typedef
continue int union
default long unsigned
do register void
double return volatile
else short while
enum signed
C99 added five more reserved words: (‡ indicates an alternative spelling alias for a C23 keyword)
inline _Bool ‡ _Imaginary

restrict _Complex
C11 added seven more reserved words:[32] (‡ indicates an alternative spelling alias for a C23 keyword)
_Alignas ‡ _Generic _Thread_local ‡

_Alignof ‡ _Noreturn
_Atomic _Static_assert ‡
C23 reserved fifteen more words:
alignas constexpr static_assert

alignof false thread_local
bool nullptr true
typeof _BitInt _Decimal64
typeof_unqual _Decimal32 _Decimal128
Most of the recently reserved words begin with an underscore followed by a capital letter, because
identifiers of that form were previously reserved by the C standard for use only by implementations.
Since existing program source code should not have been using these identifiers, it would not be affected
when C implementations started supporting these extensions to the programming language. Some
standard headers do define more convenient synonyms for underscored identifiers. Some of those words
were added as keywords with their conventional spelling in C23 and the corresponding macros were
removed.
Prior to C89, entry was reserved as a keyword. In the second edition of their book The C Programming
Language, which describes what became known as C89, Kernighan and Ritchie wrote, "The ... [keyword]
entry, formerly reserved but never used, is no longer reserved." and "The stillborn entry keyword is
withdrawn."[33]
Operators
C supports a rich set of operators, which are symbols used within an expression to specify the
manipulations to be performed while evaluating that expression. C has operators for:
arithmetic: +, -, *, /, %
assignment: =
augmented assignment: +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, &=, |=, ^=, <<=, >>=
bitwise logic: ~, &, |, ^
bitwise shifts: <<, >>
Boolean logic: !, &&, ||
conditional evaluation: ? :
equality testing: ==, !=
calling functions: ( )
increment and decrement: ++, --
member selection: ., ->
object size: sizeof
type: typeof, typeof_unqual since C23
order relations: <, <=, >, >=
reference and dereference: &, *, [ ]
sequencing: ,
subexpression grouping: ( )
type conversion: (typename)
C uses the operator = (used in mathematics to express equality) to indicate assignment, following the
precedent of Fortran and PL/I, but unlike ALGOL and its derivatives. C uses the operator == to test for
equality. The similarity between the operators for assignment and equality may result in the accidental
use of one in place of the other, and in many cases the mistake does not produce an error message
(although some compilers produce warnings). For example, the conditional expression if (a == b +
1) might mistakenly be written as if (a = b + 1), which will be evaluated as true unless the
value of a is 0 after the assignment.[34]
The C operator precedence is not always intuitive. For example, the operator == binds more tightly than
(is executed prior to) the operators & (bitwise AND) and | (bitwise OR) in expressions such as x & 1
== 0, which must be written as (x & 1) == 0 if that is the coder's intent.[35]
"Hello, world" example

The "hello, world" example that appeared in the first edition of
K&R has become the model for an introductory program in most
programming textbooks. The program prints "hello, world" to the
standard output, which is usually a terminal or screen display.
The original version was:[36]
main()
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}
A standard-conforming "hello, world" program is:[a]

"Hello, World!" program by Brian
#include <stdio.h> Kernighan (1978)
int main(void)
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}
The first line of the program contains a preprocessing directive, indicated by #include. This causes the
compiler to replace that line of code with the entire text of the stdio.h header file, which contains
declarations for standard input and output functions such as printf and scanf. The angle brackets
surrounding stdio.h indicate that the header file can be located using a search strategy that prefers
headers provided with the compiler to other headers having the same name (as opposed to double quotes
which typically include local or project-specific header files).
The second line indicates that a function named main is being defined. The main function serves a
special purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program
execution. The type specifier int indicates that the value returned to the invoker (in this case the run-
time environment) as a result of evaluating the main function, is an integer. The keyword void as a
parameter list indicates that the main function takes no arguments.[b]
The opening curly brace indicates the beginning of the code that defines the main function.
The next line of the program is a statement that calls (i.e. diverts execution to) a function named
printf, which in this case is supplied from a system library. In this call, the printf function is passed
(i.e. provided with) a single argument, which is the address of the first character in the string literal
"hello, world\n". The string literal is an unnamed array set up automatically by the compiler, with
elements of type char and a final NULL character (ASCII value 0) marking the end of the array (to
allow printf to determine the length of the string). The NULL character can also be written as the
escape sequence \0. The \n is a standard escape sequence that C translates to a newline character, which,
on output, signifies the end of the current line. The return value of the printf function is of type int,
but it is silently discarded since it is not used. (A more careful program might test the return value to
check that the printf function succeeded.) The semicolon ; terminates the statement.
The closing curly brace indicates the end of the code for the main function. According to the C99
specification and newer, the main function (unlike any other function) will implicitly return a value of 0
upon reaching the } that terminates the function.[c] The return value of 0 is interpreted by the run-time
system as an exit code indicating successful execution of the function.[37]
Data types
The type system in C is static and weakly typed, which makes it
similar to the type system of ALGOL descendants such as
Pascal.[38] There are built-in types for integers of various sizes,
both signed and unsigned, floating-point numbers, and enumerated
types (enum). Integer type char is often used for single-byte
characters. C99 added a Boolean data type. There are also derived
types including arrays, pointers, records (struct), and unions
(union).
C is often used in low-level systems programming where escapes

from the type system may be necessary. The compiler attempts to
ensure type correctness of most expressions, but the programmer
can override the checks in various ways, either by using a type
cast to explicitly convert a value from one type to another, or by
using pointers or unions to reinterpret the underlying bits of a data
object in some other way.
Some find C's declaration syntax unintuitive, particularly for function pointers. (Ritchie's idea was to
declare identifiers in contexts resembling their use: "declaration reflects use".)[39]
C's usual arithmetic conversions allow for efficient code to be generated, but can sometimes produce
unexpected results. For example, a comparison of signed and unsigned integers of equal width requires a
conversion of the signed value to unsigned. This can generate unexpected results if the signed value is
negative.
Pointers
C supports the use of pointers, a type of reference that records the address or location of an object or
function in memory. Pointers can be dereferenced to access data stored at the address pointed to, or to
invoke a pointed-to function. Pointers can be manipulated using assignment or pointer arithmetic. The
run-time representation of a pointer value is typically a raw memory address (perhaps augmented by an
offset-within-word field), but since a pointer's type includes the type of the thing pointed to, expressions
including pointers can be type-checked at compile time. Pointer arithmetic is automatically scaled by the
size of the pointed-to data type.
Pointers are used for many purposes in C. Text strings are commonly manipulated using pointers into
arrays of characters. Dynamic memory allocation is performed using pointers; the result of a malloc is
usually cast to the data type of the data to be stored. Many data types, such as trees, are commonly
implemented as dynamically allocated struct objects linked together using pointers. Pointers to other
pointers are often used in multi-dimensional arrays and arrays of struct objects. Pointers to functions
(function pointers) are useful for passing functions as arguments to higher-order functions (such as qsort
or bsearch), in dispatch tables, or as callbacks to event handlers.[37]
A null pointer value explicitly points to no valid location. Dereferencing a null pointer value is undefined,
often resulting in a segmentation fault. Null pointer values are useful for indicating special cases such as
no "next" pointer in the final node of a linked list, or as an error indication from functions returning
pointers. In appropriate contexts in source code, such as for assigning to a pointer variable, a null pointer
constant can be written as 0, with or without explicit casting to a pointer type, as the NULL macro
defined by several standard headers or, since C23 with the constant nullptr. In conditional contexts,
null pointer values evaluate to false, while all other pointer values evaluate to true.
Void pointers (void *) point to objects of unspecified type, and can therefore be used as "generic" data
pointers. Since the size and type of the pointed-to object is not known, void pointers cannot be
dereferenced, nor is pointer arithmetic on them allowed, although they can easily be (and in many
contexts implicitly are) converted to and from any other object pointer type.[37]
Careless use of pointers is potentially dangerous. Because they are typically unchecked, a pointer variable
can be made to point to any arbitrary location, which can cause undesirable effects. Although properly
used pointers point to safe places, they can be made to point to unsafe places by using invalid pointer
arithmetic; the objects they point to may continue to be used after deallocation (dangling pointers); they
may be used without having been initialized (wild pointers); or they may be directly assigned an unsafe
value using a cast, union, or through another corrupt pointer. In general, C is permissive in allowing
manipulation of and conversion between pointer types, although compilers typically provide options for
various levels of checking. Some other programming languages address these problems by using more
restrictive reference types.
Arrays
Array types in C are traditionally of a fixed, static size specified at compile time. The more recent C99
standard also allows a form of variable-length arrays. However, it is also possible to allocate a block of
memory (of arbitrary size) at run-time, using the standard library's malloc function, and treat it as an
array.
Since arrays are always accessed (in effect) via pointers, array accesses are typically not checked against
the underlying array size, although some compilers may provide bounds checking as an option.[40][41]
Array bounds violations are therefore possible and can lead to various repercussions, including illegal
memory accesses, corruption of data, buffer overruns, and run-time exceptions.
C does not have a special provision for declaring multi-dimensional arrays, but rather relies on recursion
within the type system to declare arrays of arrays, which effectively accomplishes the same thing. The
index values of the resulting "multi-dimensional array" can be thought of as increasing in row-major
order. Multi-dimensional arrays are commonly used in numerical algorithms (mainly from applied linear
algebra) to store matrices. The structure of the C array is well suited to this particular task. However, in
early versions of C the bounds of the array must be known fixed values or else explicitly passed to any
subroutine that requires them, and dynamically sized arrays of arrays cannot be accessed using double
indexing. (A workaround for this was to allocate the array with an additional "row vector" of pointers to
the columns.) C99 introduced "variable-length arrays" which address this issue.
The following example using modern C (C99 or later) shows allocation of a two-dimensional array on the
heap and the use of multi-dimensional array indexing for accesses (which can use bounds-checking on
many C compilers):
int func(int N, int M)

{
float (*p)[N] [M] = malloc(sizeof *p);
if (p == 0)
return -1;
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
(*p)[i] [j] = i + j;
print_array(N, M, p);
free(p);
return 1;
}
And here is a similar implementation using C99's Auto VLA feature:[d]
int func(int N, int M)

{
// Caution: checks should be made to ensure N*M*sizeof(float) does NOT exceed limitations for auto
VLAs and is within available size of stack.
float p[N] [M]; // auto VLA is held on the stack, and sized when the function is invoked
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
p[i] [j] = i + j;
print_array(N, M, p);
// no need to free(p) since it will disappear when the function exits, along with the rest of the
stack frame
return 1;
}
Array–pointer interchangeability
The subscript notation x[i] (where x designates a pointer) is syntactic sugar for *(x+i).[42] Taking
advantage of the compiler's knowledge of the pointer type, the address that x + i points to is not the
base address (pointed to by x) incremented by i bytes, but rather is defined to be the base address
incremented by i multiplied by the size of an element that x points to. Thus, x[i] designates the i+1th
element of the array.
Furthermore, in most expression contexts (a notable exception is as operand of sizeof), an expression

of array type is automatically converted to a pointer to the array's first element. This implies that an array
is never copied as a whole when named as an argument to a function, but rather only the address of its
first element is passed. Therefore, although function calls in C use pass-by-value semantics, arrays are in
effect passed by reference.
The total size of an array x can be determined by applying sizeof to an expression of array type. The
size of an element can be determined by applying the operator sizeof to any dereferenced element of
an array A, as in n = sizeof A[0]. Thus, the number of elements in a declared array A can be
determined as sizeof A / sizeof A[0]. Note, that if only a pointer to the first element is
available as it is often the case in C code because of the automatic conversion described above, the
information about the full type of the array and its length are lost.
Memory management
One of the most important functions of a programming language is to provide facilities for managing
memory and the objects that are stored in memory. C provides three principal ways to allocate memory
for objects:[37]
Static memory allocation: space for the object is provided in the binary at compile-time;
these objects have an extent (or lifetime) as long as the binary which contains them is
loaded into memory.
Automatic memory allocation: temporary objects can be stored on the stack, and this space
is automatically freed and reusable after the block in which they are declared is exited.
Dynamic memory allocation: blocks of memory of arbitrary size can be requested at run-
time using library functions such as malloc from a region of memory called the heap; these
blocks persist until subsequently freed for reuse by calling the library function realloc or
free.
These three approaches are appropriate in different situations and have various trade-offs. For example,
static memory allocation has little allocation overhead, automatic allocation may involve slightly more
overhead, and dynamic memory allocation can potentially have a great deal of overhead for both
allocation and deallocation. The persistent nature of static objects is useful for maintaining state
information across function calls, automatic allocation is easy to use but stack space is typically much
more limited and transient than either static memory or heap space, and dynamic memory allocation
allows convenient allocation of objects whose size is known only at run-time. Most C programs make
extensive use of all three.
Where possible, automatic or static allocation is usually simplest because the storage is managed by the
compiler, freeing the programmer of the potentially error-prone chore of manually allocating and
releasing storage. However, many data structures can change in size at runtime, and since static
allocations (and automatic allocations before C99) must have a fixed size at compile-time, there are many
situations in which dynamic allocation is necessary.[37] Prior to the C99 standard, variable-sized arrays
were a common example of this. (See the article on C dynamic memory allocation for an example of
dynamically allocated arrays.) Unlike automatic allocation, which can fail at run time with uncontrolled
consequences, the dynamic allocation functions return an indication (in the form of a null pointer value)
when the required storage cannot be allocated. (Static allocation that is too large is usually detected by the
linker or loader, before the program can even begin execution.)
Unless otherwise specified, static objects contain zero or null pointer values upon program startup.
Automatically and dynamically allocated objects are initialized only if an initial value is explicitly
specified; otherwise they initially have indeterminate values (typically, whatever bit pattern happens to be
present in the storage, which might not even represent a valid value for that type). If the program attempts
to access an uninitialized value, the results are undefined. Many modern compilers try to detect and warn
about this problem, but both false positives and false negatives can occur.
Heap memory allocation has to be synchronized with its actual usage in any program to be reused as
much as possible. For example, if the only pointer to a heap memory allocation goes out of scope or has
its value overwritten before it is deallocated explicitly, then that memory cannot be recovered for later
reuse and is essentially lost to the program, a phenomenon known as a memory leak. Conversely, it is
possible for memory to be freed, but is referenced subsequently, leading to unpredictable results.
Typically, the failure symptoms appear in a portion of the program unrelated to the code that causes the
error, making it difficult to diagnose the failure. Such issues are ameliorated in languages with automatic
garbage collection.
Libraries
The C programming language uses libraries as its primary method of extension. In C, a library is a set of
functions contained within a single "archive" file. Each library typically has a header file, which contains
the prototypes of the functions contained within the library that may be used by a program, and
declarations of special data types and macro symbols used with these functions. For a program to use a
library, it must include the library's header file, and the library must be linked with the program, which in
many cases requires compiler flags (e.g., -lm, shorthand for "link the math library").[37]
The most common C library is the C standard library, which is specified by the ISO and ANSI C
standards and comes with every C implementation (implementations which target limited environments
such as embedded systems may provide only a subset of the standard library). This library supports
stream input and output, memory allocation, mathematics, character strings, and time values. Several
separate standard headers (for example, stdio.h) specify the interfaces for these and other standard
library facilities.
Another common set of C library functions are those used by applications specifically targeted for Unix
and Unix-like systems, especially functions which provide an interface to the kernel. These functions are
detailed in various standards such as POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification.
Since many programs have been written in C, there are a wide variety of other libraries available.
Libraries are often written in C because C compilers generate efficient object code; programmers then
create interfaces to the library so that the routines can be used from higher-level languages like Java, Perl,
and Python.[37]
File handling and streams

File input and output (I/O) is not part of the C language itself but instead is handled by libraries (such as
the C standard library) and their associated header files (e.g. stdio.h). File handling is generally
implemented through high-level I/O which works through streams. A stream is from this perspective a
data flow that is independent of devices, while a file is a concrete device. The high-level I/O is done
through the association of a stream to a file. In the C standard library, a buffer (a memory area or queue)
is temporarily used to store data before it is sent to the final destination. This reduces the time spent
waiting for slower devices, for example a hard drive or solid-state drive. Low-level I/O functions are not
part of the standard C library but are generally part of "bare metal" programming (programming that is
independent of any operating system such as most embedded programming). With few exceptions,
implementations include low-level I/O.
Language tools
A number of tools have been developed to help C programmers find and fix statements with undefined
behavior or possibly erroneous expressions, with greater rigor than that provided by the compiler. The
tool lint was the first such, leading to many others.
Automated source code checking and auditing are beneficial in any language, and for C many such tools
exist, such as Lint. A common practice is to use Lint to detect questionable code when a program is first
written. Once a program passes Lint, it is then compiled using the C compiler. Also, many compilers can
optionally warn about syntactically valid constructs that are likely to actually be errors. MISRA C is a
proprietary set of guidelines to avoid such questionable code, developed for embedded systems.[43]
There are also compilers, libraries, and operating system level mechanisms for performing actions that
are not a standard part of C, such as bounds checking for arrays, detection of buffer overflow,
serialization, dynamic memory tracking, and automatic garbage collection.
Tools such as Purify or Valgrind and linking with libraries containing special versions of the memory
allocation functions can help uncover runtime errors in memory usage.[44][45]
Uses
Rationale for use in systems programming

C is widely used for systems programming in implementing
operating systems and embedded system applications.[46] This is
for several reasons:
The C language permits platform hardware and memory

to be accessed with pointers and type punning, so
system-specific features (e.g. Control/Status Registers,
I/O registers) can be configured and used with code
written in C – it allows fullest control of the platform it is
Some software written in C
running on.
The code generated after compilation does not demand
many system features, and can be invoked from some
boot code in a straightforward manner – it is simple to execute.
The C language statements and expressions typically map well on to sequences of
instructions for the target processor, and consequently there is a low run-time demand on
system resources – it is fast to execute.
With its rich set of operators, the C language can use many of the features of target CPUs.
Where a particular CPU has more esoteric instructions, a language variant can be
constructed with perhaps intrinsic functions to exploit those instructions – it can use
practically all the target CPU's features.
The language makes it easy to overlay structures onto blocks of binary data, allowing the
data to be comprehended, navigated and modified – it can write data structures, even file
systems.
The language supports a rich set of operators, including bit manipulation, for integer
arithmetic and logic, and perhaps different sizes of floating point numbers – it can process
appropriately-structured data effectively.
C is a fairly small language, with only a handful of statements, and without too many
features that generate extensive target code – it is comprehensible.
C has direct control over memory allocation and deallocation, which gives reasonable
efficiency and predictable timing to memory-handling operations, without any concerns for
sporadic stop-the-world garbage collection events – it has predictable performance.
C permits the use and implementation of different memory allocation schemes, including a
typical malloc and free; a more sophisticated mechanism with arenas; or a version for an
OS kernel that may suit DMA, use within interrupt handlers, or integrated with the virtual
memory system.
Depending on the linker and environment, C code can also call libraries written in assembly
language, and may be called from assembly language – it interoperates well with other
lower-level code.
C and its calling conventions and linker structures are commonly used in conjunction with
other high-level languages, with calls both to C and from C supported – it interoperates well
with other high-level code.
C has a very mature and broad ecosystem, including libraries, frameworks, open source
compilers, debuggers and utilities, and is the de facto standard. It is likely the drivers
already exist in C, or that there is a similar CPU architecture as a back-end of a C compiler,
so there is reduced incentive to choose another language.
Used for computationally-intensive libraries

C enables programmers to create efficient implementations of algorithms and data structures, because the
layer of abstraction from hardware is thin, and its overhead is low, an important criterion for
computationally intensive programs. For example, the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library, the
GNU Scientific Library, Mathematica, and MATLAB are completely or partially written in C. Many
languages support calling library functions in C, for example, the Python-based framework NumPy uses
C for the high-performance and hardware-interacting aspects.
C as an intermediate language
C is sometimes used as an intermediate language by implementations of other languages. This approach
may be used for portability or convenience; by using C as an intermediate language, additional machine-
specific code generators are not necessary. C has some features, such as line-number preprocessor
directives and optional superfluous commas at the end of initializer lists, that support compilation of
generated code. However, some of C's shortcomings have prompted the development of other C-based
languages specifically designed for use as intermediate languages, such as C--. Also, contemporary major
compilers GCC and LLVM both feature an intermediate representation that is not C, and those compilers
support front ends for many languages including C.
Other languages written in C

A consequence of C's wide availability and efficiency is that compilers, libraries and interpreters of other
programming languages are often implemented in C.[47] For example, the reference implementations of
Python,[48] Perl,[49] Ruby,[50] and PHP[51] are written in C.
Once used for web development

Historically, C was sometimes used for web development using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) as
a "gateway" for information between the web application, the server, and the browser.[52] C may have
been chosen over interpreted languages because of its speed, stability, and near-universal availability.[53]
It is no longer common practice for web development to be done in C,[54] and many other web
development tools exist.
Web servers
The two most popular web servers, Apache HTTP Server and Nginx, are both written in C. These web
servers interact with the operating system, listen on TCP ports for HTTP requests, and then serve up static
web content, or cause the execution of other languages handling to 'render' content such as PHP, which is
itself primarily written in C. C's close-to-the-metal approach allows for the construction of these high-
performance software systems.
End-user applications
C has also been widely used to implement end-user applications.[55] However, such applications can also
be written in newer, higher-level languages.
Limitations
the power of assembly language and the convenience of ... assembly language
— Dennis Ritchie[56]
While C has been popular, influential and hugely successful, it has drawbacks, including:
The standard dynamic memory handling with malloc and free is error prone. Bugs
include: Memory leaks when memory is allocated but not freed; and access to previously
freed memory.
The use of pointers and the direct manipulation of memory means corruption of memory is
possible, perhaps due to programmer error, or insufficient checking of bad data.
There is some type checking, but it does not apply to areas like variadic functions, and the
type checking can be trivially or inadvertently circumvented. It is weakly typed.
Since the code generated by the compiler contains few checks itself, there is a burden on
the programmer to consider all possible outcomes, to protect against buffer overruns, array
bounds checking, stack overflows, memory exhaustion, and consider race conditions,
thread isolation, etc.
The use of pointers and the run-time manipulation of these means there may be two ways to
access the same data (aliasing), which is not determinable at compile time. This means that
some optimisations that may be available to other languages are not possible in C.
FORTRAN is considered faster.
Some of the standard library functions, e.g. scanf or strncat, can lead to buffer overruns.
There is limited standardisation in support for low-level variants in generated code, for
example: different function calling conventions and ABI; different structure packing
conventions; different byte ordering within larger integers (including endianness). In many
language implementations, some of these options may be handled with the preprocessor
directive #pragma,[57][58] and some with additional keywords e.g. use __cdecl calling
convention. But the directive and options are not consistently supported.[59]
String handling using the standard library is code-intensive, with explicit memory
management required.
The language does not directly support object orientation, introspection, run-time expression
evaluation, generics, etc.
There are few guards against inappropriate use of language features, which may lead to
unmaintainable code. In particular, the C preprocessor can hide troubling effects such as
double evaluation and worse.[60] This facility for tricky code has been celebrated with
competitions such as the International Obfuscated C Code Contest and the Underhanded C
Contest.
C lacks standard support for exception handling and only offers return codes for error
checking. The setjmp and longjmp standard library functions have been used[61] to
implement a try-catch mechanism via macros.
For some purposes, restricted styles of C have been adopted, e.g. MISRA C or CERT C, in an attempt to
reduce the opportunity for bugs. Databases such as CWE attempt to count the ways C etc. has
vulnerabilities, along with recommendations for mitigation.
There are tools that can mitigate against some of the drawbacks. Contemporary C compilers include
checks which may generate warnings to help identify many potential bugs.
Related languages
C has both directly and indirectly influenced many later languages
such as C++ and Java.[63] The most pervasive influence has been
syntactical; all of the languages mentioned combine the statement
and (more or less recognizably) expression syntax of C with type
systems, data models or large-scale program structures that differ
from those of C, sometimes radically. The TIOBE index graph, showing a
comparison of the popularity of
Several C or near-C interpreters exist, including Ch and CINT, various programming languages[62]
which can also be used for scripting.
When object-oriented programming languages became popular, C++ and Objective-C were two different
extensions of C that provided object-oriented capabilities. Both languages were originally implemented
as source-to-source compilers; source code was translated into C, and then compiled with a C
compiler.[64]
The C++ programming language (originally named "C with Classes") was devised by Bjarne Stroustrup
as an approach to providing object-oriented functionality with a C-like syntax.[65] C++ adds greater
typing strength, scoping, and other tools useful in object-oriented programming, and permits generic
programming via templates. Nearly a superset of C, C++ now supports most of C, with a few exceptions.
Objective-C was originally a very "thin" layer on top of C, and remains a strict superset of C that permits
object-oriented programming using a hybrid dynamic/static typing paradigm. Objective-C derives its
syntax from both C and Smalltalk: syntax that involves preprocessing, expressions, function declarations,
and function calls is inherited from C, while the syntax for object-oriented features was originally taken
from Smalltalk.
In addition to C++ and Objective-C, Ch, Cilk, and Unified Parallel C are nearly supersets of C.
See also
Computer
programming portal
Free and open-
source software
portal
Compatibility of C and C++

Comparison of Pascal and C
Comparison of programming languages
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
List of C-family programming languages
List of C compilers
Notes
a. The original example code will compile on most modern compilers that are not in strict
standard compliance mode, but it does not fully conform to the requirements of either C89
or C99. In fact, C99 requires that a diagnostic message be produced.
b. The main function actually has two arguments, int argc and char *argv[],
respectively, which can be used to handle command-line arguments. The ISO C standard
(section 5.1.2.2.1) requires both forms of main to be supported, which is special treatment
not afforded to any other function.
c. Prior to C99, an explicit return 0; statement was required at the end of the main
function.
d. Code of print_array (not shown) slightly differs, too.
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Further reading
Plauger, P.J. (1992). The Standard C Library (1 ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0131315099.
(source) (https://github.com/wuzhouhui/c_standard_lib)
Banahan, M.; Brady, D.; Doran, M. (1991). The C Book: Featuring the ANSI C Standard
(2 ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0201544336. (free) (https://github.com/wardvanwanrooij/thecbo
ok)
Feuer, Alan R. (1985). The C Puzzle Book (1 ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131099345.
Harbison, Samuel; Steele, Guy Jr. (2002). C: A Reference Manual (5 ed.). Pearson.
ISBN 978-0130895929. (archive) (https://archive.org/details/creferencemanual00harb)
King, K.N. (2008). C Programming: A Modern Approach (2 ed.). W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-
0393979503. (archive) (https://archive.org/details/cprogrammingmode0000king)
Griffiths, David; Griffiths, Dawn (2012). Head First C (1 ed.). O'Reilly. ISBN 978-
1449399917.
Perry, Greg; Miller, Dean (2013). C Programming: Absolute Beginner's Guide (3 ed.). Que.
ISBN 978-0789751980.
Deitel, Paul; Deitel, Harvey (2015). C: How to Program (8 ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-
0133976892.
Gustedt, Jens (2019). Modern C (2 ed.). Manning. ISBN 978-1617295812. (free) (https://gusted
t.gitlabpages.inria.fr/modern-c/)
External links
ISO C Working Group official website (https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/)
ISO/IEC 9899 (https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/standards), publicly
available official C documents, including the C99 Rationale
"C99 with Technical corrigenda TC1, TC2, and TC3 included" (https://www.open-std.org/
JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n1256.pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2
0071025205438/http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n1256.pdf)
(PDF) from the original on October 25, 2007. (3.61 MB)
comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions (https://c-faq.com/)
A History of C (https://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/docs/chistory.html), by Dennis Ritchie
C Library Reference and Examples (https://en.cppreference.com/w/c)
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C_(programming_language)

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C_(programming_language)

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C (programming language)

C (pronounced /ˈsiː/ – like the letter c)[6] is a general-

C is an imperative procedural language, supporting Website www.iso.org/standard

C is an imperative, procedural language in the ALGOL

The C language also exhibits the following characteristics:

Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct) allow related data elements to be

Relations to other languages

New B and first C release

Structures and Unix kernel re-write

K&R introduced several language features:

Standard I/O library

void functions (i.e., functions with no return value)

ANSI C and ISO C

auto extern sizeof

inline _Bool ‡ _Imaginary

_Alignas ‡ _Generic _Thread_local ‡

alignas constexpr static_assert

"Hello, world" example

The original version was:[36]

A standard-conforming "hello, world" program is:[a]

C is often used in low-level systems programming where escapes

int func(int N, int M)

And here is a similar implementation using C99's Auto VLA feature:[d]

int func(int N, int M)

Furthermore, in most expression contexts (a notable exception is as operand of sizeof), an expression

File handling and streams

Rationale for use in systems programming

The C language permits platform hardware and memory

Used for computationally-intensive libraries

Other languages written in C

Once used for web development

Compatibility of C and C++

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