C is a general-purpose, block structured, procedural, imperative computer programming

language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use
with the Unix operating system.[1] It has since spread to many other platforms. Although
C was designed as a system implementation language,[2][3] it is also widely used for
applications. C has also greatly influenced many other popular languages,[4] especially
C++, which was originally designed as an extension to C.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Philosophy
• 2 Characteristics
• 3 History
o 3.1 Early developments
o 3.2 K&R C
o 3.3 ANSI C and ISO C
o 3.4 C99
 3.4.1 New features
 3.4.2 Upward-compatibility with C90
 3.4.3 Support by major compilers
 3.4.4 Version detection
• 4 Uses
• 5 Syntax
• 6 C Operators
o 6.1 Operator precedence and associativity
• 7 "Hello, world" example
• 8 Data structures
o 8.1 Pointers
o 8.2 Arrays
o 8.3 Array↔pointer interchangeability
• 9 Memory management
• 10 Libraries
• 11 Criticism
• 12 Tools for mitigating issues with C
• 13 Related languages
o 13.1 C++
o 13.2 D
o 13.3 Objective-C
o 13.4 Other influences
• 14 See also
• 15 Notes
• 16 References
• 17 External links
o 17.1 History
 o 17.2 Tutorials

o 17.3 Resources

[edit] Philosophy
C is an imperative (procedural) systems implementation language. Its design goals were
for it to be compiled using a relatively straightforward compiler, provide low-level access
to memory, provide language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, and
require minimal run-time support. C was therefore useful for many applications that had
formerly been coded in assembly language.

Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage machine-
independent programming. A standards-compliant and portably written C program can be
compiled for a very wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with
minimal change to its source code. The language has become available on a very wide
range of platforms, from embedded microcontrollers to supercomputers.

[edit] Characteristics
Like most imperative languages in the ALGOL tradition, C has facilities for structured
programming and allows lexical variable scope and recursion, while a static type system
prevents many unintended operations. In C, all executable code is contained within
functions. Function parameters are always passed by value. Pass-by-reference is achieved
in C by explicitly passing pointer values. Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct)
allow related data elements to be combined and manipulated as a unit. C program source
text is free-format, using semicolon as a statement terminator (not a delimiter).

C also exhibits the following more specific characteristics:

• non-nestable function definitions, although variables may be hidden in nested

blocks
• partially weak typing; for instance, characters can be used as integers
• low-level access to computer memory by converting machine addresses to typed
pointers
• function pointers allowing for a rudimentary form of closures and runtime
polymorphism
• array indexing as a secondary notion, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic
• a preprocessor for macro definition, source code file inclusion, and conditional
compilation
• complex functionality such as I/O, string manipulation, and mathematical
functions consistently delegated to library routines
• around 30 reserved keywords
• syntax divergent from ALGOL, often following the lead of C's predecessor B, for
example using
 o { ... } rather than ALGOL's begin ... end
o the equal-sign for assignment (copying), much like Fortran
o two consecutive equal-signs to test for equality (compare to .EQ. in
Fortran or the equal-sign in BASIC)
o && and || in place of ALGOL's and and or, which
 are syntactically distinct from the bit-wise operators & and | (used
by B for both meanings)
 never evaluate the right operand if the result can be determined
from the left alone (short-circuit evaluation)
o a large number of compound operators, such as +=, ++, etc.

[edit] History
[edit] Early developments

The initial development of C occurred at AT&T Bell Labs between 1969 and 1973;
according to Ritchie, the most creative period occurred in 1972. It was named "C"
because many of its features were derived from an earlier language called "B", which
according to Ken Thompson was a stripped down version of the BCPL programming
language.

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 Ritchie and Thompson,
incorporating several ideas from colleagues. Eventually they decided to port the operating
system to a PDP-11. B's lack of functionality to take advantage of some of the PDP-11's
features, notably byte addressability, led to the development of an early version of the C
programming language.

The original PDP-11 version of the Unix system was developed in assembly language.
By 1973, with the addition of struct types, the C language had become powerful enough
that most of the Unix kernel was rewritten in C. This was one of the first operating
system kernels implemented in a language other than assembly. (Earlier instances include
the Multics system (written in PL/I), and MCP (Master Control Program) for the
Burroughs B5000 written in ALGOL in 1961.)

[edit] K&R C

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of The C
Programming Language. This book, known to C programmers as "K&R", 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". The second edition of the book covers
the later ANSI C standard.

K&R introduced several language features:

 • standard I/O library
• long int data type
• unsigned int data type
• compound assignment operators =op were changed to op= to remove the semantic
ambiguity created by the construct i=-10, which had been interpreted as i =- 10
instead of the possibly intended i = -10

Even after the publication of the 1989 C 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 returned a non-integer value needed to be

declared if used before the function definition; a function used without any previous
declaration was assumed to return an integer, if its value was used.

For example:

long int SomeFunction();

/* int OtherFunction(); */

/* int */ CallingFunction()
{
long int test1;
register /* int */ test2;

test1 = SomeFunction();
if (test1 > 0)
test2 = 0;
else
test2 = OtherFunction();

return test2;
}

All the above commented-out int declarations could be omitted in K&R C.

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 multiple 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 unofficial features were added
to the language, supported by compilers from AT&T and some other vendors. These
included:

• void functions
 • functions returning struct or union types (rather than pointers)
• assignment for struct data types
• enumerated types

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.

[edit] 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. At the same time, Bjarne Stroustrup and others
at Bell Labs began work on adding object-oriented programming language constructs to
C, resulting in the language now called C++.

In 1983, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formed a committee, X3J11,
to establish a standard specification of C. In 1989, the 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 a few minor modifications) was adopted by the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 9899:1990. This version
is sometimes called C90. Therefore, the terms "C89" and "C90" refer to essentially the
same language.

One of the aims of the C standardization process was to produce a superset of K&R C,
incorporating many of the unofficial features subsequently introduced. However, the
standards committee also included several new features, such as function prototypes
(borrowed from C++), void pointers, support for international character sets and locales,
and preprocessor enhancements. The syntax for parameter declarations was also
augmented to include the C++ style:

int main(int argc, char **argv)

{
...
}

although the K&R interface

int main(argc, argv)

int argc;
char **argv;
{
...
}

continued to be permitted, for compatibility with existing source code.

C89 is supported by current C compilers, and most C code being written nowadays 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 take advantage of features available only in Standard C.

#ifdef __STDC__
extern int getopt(int,char * const *,const char *);
#else
extern int getopt();
#endif

In the above example, a compiler which has defined the __STDC__ macro (as mandated
by the C standard) only interprets the line following the ifdef command. In other,
nonstandard compilers which don't define the macro, only the line following the else
command is interpreted.

[edit] C99

Note: C99 is also the name of a C compiler for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
home computer. Aside from being a C compiler, it is otherwise unrelated.

After the ANSI standardization process, the C language specification remained relatively
static for some time, whereas C++ continued to evolve, largely during its own
standardization effort. Normative Amendment 1 created a new standard for the C
language in 1995, but only to correct some details of the C89 standard and to add more
extensive support for international character sets. However, the standard underwent
further revision in the late 1990s, leading to the publication of ISO 9899:1999 in 1999.
This standard is commonly referred to as "C99." It was adopted as an ANSI standard in
May 2000.

[edit] New features

C99 introduced several new features, many of which had already been implemented as
extensions in several compilers:

• inline functions
• variable declaration no longer restricted to file scope or the start of a compound
statement
 • several new data types, including long long int, optional extended integer
types, an explicit boolean data type, and a complex type to represent complex
numbers
• variable-length arrays
• support for one-line comments beginning with //, as in BCPL or C++
• new library functions, such as snprintf
• new header files, such as stdbool.h and inttypes.h
• type-generic math functions (tgmath.h)
• improved support for IEEE floating point
• designated initializers
• compound literals
• support for variadic macros (macros of variable arity)
• restrict qualification to allow more aggressive code optimization

[edit] Upward-compatibility with C90

C99 is for the most part upward-compatible with C90, but is stricter in some ways; in
particular, a declaration that lacks a type specifier no longer has int implicitly assumed.
The C standards committee decided that it was of more value for compilers to diagnose
inadvertent omission of the type specifier than to silently process legacy code that relied
on implicit int. In practice, compilers are likely to diagnose the omission but also
assume int and continue translating the program.

[edit] Support by major compilers

GCC and other C compilers now support many of the new features of C99. However,
there has been less support from vendors such as Microsoft and Borland that have mainly
focused on C++, since C++ provides similar functionality improvement.

GCC, despite its extensive C99 support, is still not a completely compliant
implementation; several key features are missing or don't work correctly.[1]

[edit] Version detection

A standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined with value 199901L to indicate that C99
support is available. As with the __STDC__ macro for C90, __STDC_VERSION__ can be
used to write code that will compile differently for C90 and C99 compilers, as in this
example that ensures that inline is available in either case.

#if __STDC_VERSION__ >= 199901L

/* "inline" is a keyword */
#else
# define inline /* nothing */
#endif

[edit] Uses
C's primary use is for "system programming", including implementing operating systems
and embedded system applications, due to a combination of desirable characteristics such
as code portability and efficiency, ability to access specific hardware addresses, ability to
"pun" types to match externally imposed data access requirements, and low runtime
demand on system resources.

C has also been widely used to implement end-user applications, although as applications
became larger much of that development shifted to other, higher-level languages.

One consequence of C's wide acceptance and efficiency is that the compilers, libraries,
and interpreters of other higher-level languages are often implemented in C.

C is used as an intermediate language by some implementations of higher-level

languages, which translate the input language to C source code, perhaps along with other
object representations. The C source code is compiled by a C compiler to produce object
code. This approach may be used to gain portability (C compilers exist for nearly all
platforms) or for convenience (it avoids having to develop machine-specific code
generators). Some programming languages which use C this way are Eiffel, Esterel,
Gambit, the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, Lisp dialects, Lush, Sather, Squeak, and Vala.

Unfortunately, C was designed as a programming language, not as a compiler target

language, and is thus less than ideal for use as an intermediate language. This has led to
development of C-based intermediate languages such as C--.

[edit] Syntax
Main article: C syntax

Unlike languages such as FORTRAN 77, C source code is free-form which allows
arbitrary use of whitespace to format code, rather than column-based or text-line-based
restrictions. Comments may appear either between the delimiters /* and */, or (in C99)
following // until the end of the line.

Each source file contains 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 }) 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 may be 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 to leave the innermost enclosing loop statement or skip
to its reinitialization. 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.

Expressions can use a variety of built-in operators (see below) and may contain function
calls. The order in which operands to most operators, as well as the arguments to
functions, 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. This permits a high degree of object code
optimization by the compiler, but requires C programmers to exert more care to obtain
reliable results than is needed for other programming languages.

[edit] C Operators
Main article: Operators in C and C++

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
• equality testing
• order relations
• Boolean logic
• bitwise logic
• assignment
• increment and decrement
• reference and dereference
• conditional evaluation
• member selection
• type conversion
• object size
• function argument collection
• sequencing
• subexpression grouping

[edit] Operator precedence and associativity

What follows is the list of C operators sorted from highest to lowest priority
(precedence). Operators of same priority are presented on the same line. (That the post-
increment operator (++) has higher priority than the dereference operator (*) means that
an expression *p++ is grouped as *(p++) and not (*p)++. That the subtraction operator
(-) has left-to-right associativity means that an expression a-b-c is grouped as (a-b)-c
and not a-(b-c).)

Class Associativity Operators

Grouping Nesting (expr)

Postfix Left-to-Right (args) [] -> . expr++ expr--

Unary Right-to-Left ! ~ + − * & (typecast) sizeof ++expr --expr

Multiplicative Left-to-Right * / %

Additive Left-to-Right + -

Shift Left-to-Right << >>

Relational Left-to-Right < <= > >=

Equality Left-to-Right == !=

Bitwise AND Left-to-Right &

Bitwise XOR Left-to-Right ^

Bitwise OR Left-to-Right |

Logical AND Left-to-Right &&

Logical OR Left-to-Right ||

Conditional Right-to-Left ?:

Assignment Right-to-Left = += -= *= /= &= |= ^= <<= >>=

Sequence Left-to-Right ,

[edit] "Hello, world" example

The following simple application appeared in the first edition of K&R, and has become
the model for an introductory program in most programming textbooks, regardless of
programming language. The program prints out "hello, world" to the standard output,
which is usually a terminal or screen display. Standard output might also be a file or some
other hardware device, depending on how standard output is mapped at the time the
program is executed.

main()
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}

The above program will compile on most modern compilers that are not in compliance
mode, but does not meet the requirements of either C89 or C99. Compiling this program
in C99 compliance mode will result in warning or error messages.[5] A compliant version
of the above program follows:

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
printf("hello, world\n");
return 0;
}

What follows is a line-by-line analysis of the above program:

#include <stdio.h>

This first line of the program is a preprocessing directive, #include. This causes the
preprocessor — the first tool to examine source code as it is compiled — to substitute the
line with the entire text of the stdio.h file. The header file stdio.h contains
declarations for standard input and output functions such as printf. The angle brackets
surrounding stdio.h indicate that stdio.h can be found using an implementation-
defined search strategy. Double quotes may also be used for headers, thus allowing the
implementation to supply (up to) two strategies. Typically, angle brackets are reserved for
headers supplied by the C compiler, and double quotes for local or installation-specific
headers.

int main(void)

This next line indicates that a function named main is being defined. The main function
serves a special purpose in C programs: When the program is executed, main is the
function called by the run-time environment—otherwise it acts like any other function in
the program. The type specifier int indicates that the return value, the value of
evaluating the main function that is returned to its invoker (in this case the run-time
environment), is an integer. The keyword (void) as a parameter list indicates that the
main function takes no arguments.[6]

This opening curly brace indicates the beginning of the definition of the main function.

printf("hello, world\n");

This line calls (executes the code for) a function named printf, which is declared in the
included header stdio.h and supplied from a system library. In this call, the printf
function is passed (provided with) a single argument, the address of the first character in
the string literal "hello, world\n". The string literal is an unnamed array with elements
of type char, set up automatically by the compiler with a final 0-valued character to mark
the end of the array (printf needs to know this). The \n is an escape sequence that C
translates to the 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 by the caller. (A more careful program might test the return value to determine
whether or not the printf function succeeded.) The semicolon ; terminates the
statement, and the following blank line is simply ignored.

return 0;

This line terminates the execution of the main function and causes it to return the integer
value 0, which is interpreted by the run-time system as an exit code (indicating successful
execution).

This closing curly brace indicates the end of the code for the main function.

[edit] Data structures

C has a static weak typing type system that shares some similarities with that of other
ALGOL descendants such as Pascal. There are built-in types for integers of various sizes,
both signed and unsigned, floating-point numbers, characters, and enumerated types
(enum). C99 added a Boolean datatype. There are also derived types including arrays,
pointers, records (struct), and untagged 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 value in some other way. (The use of type casts
obviously sacrifices some of the safety normally provided by the type system.)

[edit] Pointers

C also supports the use of pointers, a very simple type of reference that records, in effect,
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 and also 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. (See
Array↔pointer interchangeability below.) Pointers are used for many different purposes
in C. Text strings are commonly manipulated using pointers into arrays of characters.
Dynamic memory allocation, which is described below, is performed using pointers.
Many data types, such as trees, are commonly implemented as dynamically allocated
struct objects linked together using pointers. Pointers to functions are useful for
callbacks from event handlers.

A null pointer is a pointer value that points to no valid location (it is often represented by
address zero). Dereferencing a null pointer is therefore meaningless, typically resulting in
a run-time error. Null pointers 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.

Void pointers (void *) point to objects of unknown 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.

[edit] Arrays

Array types in C are always one-dimensional and, 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. C's unification of arrays and pointers (see below) means that true arrays and these
dynamically-allocated, simulated arrays are virtually interchangeable. Since arrays are
always accessed (in effect) via pointers, array accesses are typically not checked against
the underlying array size, although the compiler may provide bounds checking as an
option. Array bounds violations are therefore possible and rather common in carelessly
written code (see the "Criticism" article), and can lead to various repercussions: illegal
memory accesses, corruption of data, buffer overrun, run-time exceptions, etc.

C does not have a special provision for declaring multidimensional 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 "multidimensional array"
can be thought of as increasing in row-major order.

[edit] Array↔pointer interchangeability

A distinctive (but potentially confusing) feature of C is its treatment of arrays and

pointers. The array-subscript notation x[i] can also be used when x is a pointer; the
interpretation (using pointer arithmetic) is to access the (i+1)th of several adjacent data
objects pointed to by x, counting the object that x points to (which is x[0]) as the first
element of the array.

Formally, x[i] is equivalent to *(x + i). Since the type of the pointer involved is
known to the compiler at compile time, the address that x + i points to is not the address
pointed to by x incremented by i bytes, but rather incremented by i multiplied by the
size of an element that x points to. The size of these elements can be determined with the
operator sizeof by applying it to any dereferenced element of x, as in n = sizeof *x or
n = sizeof x[0].

Furthermore, in most expression contexts (a notable exception is sizeof array), the

name of an array 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 C's
function calls use pass-by-value semantics, arrays are in effect passed by reference.

The number of elements in a declared array a can be determined as sizeof a / sizeof

a[0].

An interesting demonstration of the interchangeability of pointers and arrays is shown

below. The four assignments are equivalent and each is valid C code. Note how the last
line contains the strange code i[x] = 1;, which has the index variable i apparently
interchanged with the array variable x. This last line might be found in obfuscated C C
code.

/* x designates an array */
x[i] = 1;
*(x + i) = 1;
*(i + x) = 1;
i[x] = 1; /* strange, but correct: i[x] is equivalent to *(i + x) */

However, there is a distinction to be made between arrays and pointer variables. Even
though the name of an array is in most expression contexts converted to a pointer (to its
first element), this pointer does not itself occupy any storage. Consequently, you cannot
change what an array "points to", and it is impossible to assign to an array. (Arrays may
however be copied using the memcpy function, for example.)

[edit] 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 distinct
ways to allocate memory for objects:

• 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 can be subsequently freed for reuse by calling the
library function free

These three approaches are appropriate in different situations and have various tradeoffs.
For example, static memory allocation has no allocation overhead, automatic allocation
may involve a small amount of overhead, and dynamic memory allocation can potentially
have a great deal of overhead for both allocation and deallocation. On the other hand,
stack space is typically much more limited and transient than either static memory or
heap space, and dynamic memory allocation allows 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 preferred because the storage is
managed by the compiler, freeing the programmer of the potentially error-prone chore of
manually allocating and releasing storage. Unfortunately, many data structures can grow
in size at runtime, and since automatic and static allocations must have a fixed size at
compile-time, there are many situations in which dynamic allocation must be used.
Variable-sized arrays are a common example of this (see "malloc" for an example of
dynamically allocated arrays).

[edit] 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. In order 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 "math library").

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. ("Freestanding" [embedded]
C implementations may provide only a subset of the standard library.) This library
supports stream input and output, memory allocation, mathematics, character strings, and
time values.

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.

[edit] Criticism
Main article: Criticism of the C programming language

Despite its popularity, C has been widely criticized. Such criticisms fall into two broad
classes: desirable operations that are too hard to achieve using unadorned C, and
undesirable operations that are too easy to accidentally invoke while using C. Putting this
another way, the safe, effective use of C requires more programmer skill, experience,
effort, and attention to detail than is required for some other programming languages.

[edit] Tools for mitigating issues with C

Tools have been created to help C programmers avoid some of the problems inherent in
the language.

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.
There are also compilers, libraries and operating system level mechanisms for performing
array bounds checking, buffer overflow detection, serialization and automatic garbage
collection, that are not a standard part of C.

Cproto is a program that will read a C source file and output prototypes of all the
functions within the source file. This program can be used in conjunction with the make
command to create new files containing prototypes each time the source file has been
changed. These prototype files can be included by the original source file (e.g., as
"filename.p"), which reduces the problems of keeping function definitions and source
files in agreement.

It should be recognized that these tools are not a panacea. Because of C's flexibility, some
types of errors involving misuse of variadic functions, out-of-bounds array indexing, and
incorrect memory management cannot be detected on some architectures without
incurring a significant performance penalty. However, some common cases can be
recognized and accounted for.

[edit] Related languages

When object-oriented languages became popular, C++ and Objective-C were two
different extensions of C that provided object-oriented capabilities. Both languages were
originally implemented as preprocessors -- source code was translated into C, and then
compiled with a C compiler.

[edit] C++

Main article: C++

Bjarne Stroustrup devised the C++ programming language as one approach to providing
object-oriented functionality with C-like syntax. 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 (see Compatibility of C and C++ for an exhaustive list of differences).

[edit] D

Main article: D (programming language)

Unlike C++, which maintains nearly complete backwards compatibility with C, D makes
a clean break with C while maintaining the same general syntax. It abandons a number of
features of C which the designer of D considered undesirable, including the C
preprocessor and trigraphs, and adds some, but not all, of the extensions of C++.

[edit] Objective-C
 Main article: Objective-C

Objective-C is a very "thin" layer on top of, and is 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 is taken from Smalltalk.

[edit] Other influences

C has directly or indirectly influenced many later languages such as Java, C#, Perl, PHP,
JavaScript, and Unix's C Shell. 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 and/or large-scale program
structures that differ from those of C, sometimes radically.

[edit] See also

• ANSI C
• C preprocessor
• C standard library
• C string
• C syntax
• C variable types and declarations
• Comparison of programming languages
• C++
• Objective-C
• BitC
• D programming language
• GNU Compiler Collection
• Impulse C
• International Obfuscated C Code Contest
• List of articles with C programs
• Operators in C and C++
• Programming tools: Cygwin, Dev-C/C++, DJGPP, GNU Compiler Collection,
LCC, Linker, make, lint, Small-C, C--, Pelles C
• Comparison of Pascal and C
• C to Java Virtual Machine compilers

[edit] Notes
1. ^ C was used to rewrite an early version of Unix that had been written in assembler.
History of the C Programming Language. Retrieved on 2006-10-31.
 2. ^ Patricia K. Lawlis, c.j. kemp systems, inc. (1997). Guidelines for Choosing a Computer
Language: Support for the Visionary Organization. Ada Information Clearinghouse.
Retrieved on 2006-07-18.
3. ^ Choosing the right programming language. Wikibooks (2006). Retrieved on 2006-07-
18.
4. ^ See Generational list of programming languages
5. ^ For C89, a diagnostic message is not required, but often one will be issued anyway.
6. ^ The main function actually has two arguments, int argc and char *argv[],
respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments. The C standard
requires that both forms of main be supported, which is special treatment not afforded
any other function.

[edit] References
• Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie: The C Programming Language. Also known as K&R
— The original book on C.
o 1st, Prentice Hall 1978; ISBN 0-13-110163-3. Pre-ANSI C.
o 2nd, Prentice Hall 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8. ANSI C.
• ISO/IEC 9899. Official C99 documents, including technical corrigenda and a rationale.
As of 2007 the latest version of the standard is ISO/IEC 9899:TC3PDF (3.61 MiB).
• Samuel P. Harbison, Guy L. Steele: C: A Reference Manual. This book is excellent as a
definitive reference manual, and for those working on C compilers. The book contains a
BNF grammar for C.
o 5th, Prentice Hall 2002; ISBN 0-13-089592-X.
• Derek M. Jones: The New C Standard: A Cultural and Economic Commentary, Addison-
Wesley, ISBN 0-201-70917-1, online material
• Robert Sedgewick: Algorithms in C, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-31452-5 (Part 1–4)
and ISBN 0-201-31663-3 (Part 5)
• William H. Press, Saul A. Teukolsky, William T. Vetterling, Brian P. Flannery: Numerical
Recipes in C (The Art of Scientific Computing), ISBN 0-521-43108-5

[edit] External links

• The current Standard (C99 with Technical corrigenda TC1, TC2, and TC3
included)PDF (3.61 MiB)

[edit] History

• The Development of the C Language by Dennis M. Ritchie

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

C Programming

[edit] Tutorials
 • "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about C Types" four part series by Peter
Seebach for IBM developerWorks:

What's in a type?, Floating point and derived types, Implementation details and
Portability and pitfalls

• C Programming course at University of Strathclyde Computer Centre

• The C Book by M.Banahan-D.Brady-M.Doran (Addison-Wesley, 2nd ed.) —
book for beginning and intermediate students, now out of print and free to
download.
• Everything you need to know about pointers in C; material available under
Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
• Howstuffworks C Programming - guide for learning C language at home.
• Notes on K&R2 - companion to K&R2

[edit] Resources

At Wikiversity, you can learn about:

Topic:C

• ISO C Working Group (official Web site)

• comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions
• comp.lang.c Wiki
• Official GNU C Library documentation - covers the C89 standard library and
most of the C99 standard library, and many standard Unix library functions
• Programming in C (document collection; formerly at Lysator)
• The New C Standard: An economic and cultural commentaryPDF (10.1 MiB) — An
unpublished book about "detailed analysis of the International Standard for the C
language."

[hide]
v•d•e

C programming language
Libraries C standard library · glibc · Dietlibc · uClibc · Newlib
History Criticism of the C programming language
String · Syntax · Preprocessor · Variable types and declarations ·
Language Features
Functions
Descendants C++ · Objective-C · D
Compatibility of C and C++ · Operators in C and C++ ·
C and Other Languages
Comparison of Pascal and C · C to Java byte-code compiler
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29"
Categories: Articles to be merged since October 2007 | C programming language |
Programming languages | Curly bracket programming languages | Procedural
programming languages