C Language - Overview

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 pubpcly available description of C, now known as the K&R standard.

The UNIX operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX apppcation 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 formapzed 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

Utipties

C Programs

A C program can vary from 3 pnes to milpons of pnes 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.