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C (programming language)

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C
File:K&R C.jpg
The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language.
Paradigmimperative (procedural) systems implementation language
Designed byDennis Ritchie
DeveloperDennis Ritchie & Bell Labs
First appeared1972
Stable release
Typing disciplinestatic, weak
Websitewww.iso.org/standard/74528.html,%20https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/
Major implementations
GCC, MSVC, Borland C, Watcom C
Influenced by
B (BCPL,CPL), ALGOL 68, Assembly
Influenced
awk, csh, C++, C#, Objective-C, BitC, D, Concurrent C, Java, JavaScript, Limbo, Perl,PHP

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 predominantly used for system software,[2][3] C is also widely used for applications. C has also greatly influenced many other popular languages,[4] especially C++, which was designed as an enhancement to C.

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.

Characteristics

As 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. Parameters of C functions are always passed by value. Pass-by-reference is achieved in C by explicitly passing pointer values. Heterogeneous aggregate data types (the struct in C) allow related data elements to be combined and manipulated as a unit. C has around 30 reserved keywords and the 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 blocks to any level of depth
  • Partially weak typing, for instance, characters can be used as integers in a way similar to assembly
  • Low-level access to computer memory via machine addresses and 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 standardized C preprocessor for macro definition, source code file inclusion, conditional compilation, etc.
  • Complex functionality such as I/O and mathematical functions consistently delegated to library routines
  • Syntax divergent from ALGOL, often following the lead of C's predecessor B, for example using
    • { ... } rather than ALGOL's begin ... end
    • the equal-sign for assignment (copying), much like Fortran
    • two consecutive equal-signs to test for equality (compare to .EQ. in Fortran or the equal-sign in BASIC)
    • && and || in place of ALGOL's and and or, which
      • are syntactically distinct from the bit-wise operators & and | (B used & and | in both meanings)
      • never evaluate the right operand if the result can be determined from the left alone (short-circuit evaluation)
    • a large number of compound operators, such as +=, ++, etc.

History

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.

There are many legends as to the origin of C and the closely related Unix operating system, including these:

  • The development of Unix was the result of programmers' desire to play the Space Travel computer game.[1] They had been playing it on their company's mainframe, but as it was underpowered and had to support about 100 users, Thompson and Ritchie found they did not have sufficient control over the spaceship to avoid collisions with the wandering space rocks. This led to the decision to port the game to an idle PDP-7 in the office. As this machine lacked an operating system, the two set out to develop one, based on several ideas from colleagues. Eventually it was decided to port the operating system to the office's PDP-11, but faced with the daunting task of translating a large body of custom-written assembly language code, the programmers began considering using a portable, high-level language so that the OS could be ported easily from one computer to another. They looked at using B, but it lacked functionality to take advantage of some of the PDP-11's advanced features. This led to the development of an early version of the C programming language.
  • The justification for obtaining the original computer to be used in developing the Unix operating system was to create a system to automate the filing of patents. The original version of the Unix system was developed in assembly language. Later, nearly all of the operating system was rewritten in C, an unprecedented move at a time when nearly all operating systems were written in assembly.

By 1973, the C language had become powerful enough that most of the Unix kernel, originally written in PDP-11 assembly language, 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.)

K&R C

In 1978, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan 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:

  • struct data types
  • long int data type
  • unsigned int data type
  • The =- operator was changed to -= to remove the semantic ambiguity created by the construct i=-10, which could be interpreted as either i =- 10 or i = -10

For many years after the introduction of ANSI C, 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 ANSI 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.

For example: 

long int SomeFunction();
int OtherFunction();

int CallingFunction()
{
    long int test1;
    int test2;

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

    return test2;
}

In the example, both SomeFunction and OtherFunction were declared before use. In K&R, OtherFunction declaration could be omitted.

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 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 (since there was no standard), supported by compilers from AT&T and some other vendors. These included:

The large number of extensions and lack of 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.

ANSI C and ISO C

File:Kr c prog lang.jpg
The C Programming Language, 2nd edition, is a widely used reference on ANSI C.

During the late 1970s, C began to replace BASIC as the leading microcomputer programming language. During the 1980s, it was adopted for use with the IBM PC, and 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 a more capable preprocessor. 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, in order 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.

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 March 2000.

New features

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

  • Inline functions
  • Variables can be declared anywhere (as in C++), rather than only after another declaration 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

Details

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.

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.[2]

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

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 C shouldn't be used to create GUI's there is many other ways around this many developers use the tool kit Qt for its speed, stability and looks.

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 higher-level languages. This is implemented in one of two ways, as languages which:

C source code is then input to a C compiler, which then outputs finished machine or object code. This is done to gain portability (C compilers exist for nearly all platforms) and to avoid having to develop machine-specific code generators.

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--.

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, as well as the pointer-to symbol *, specify built-in types. Sections of code are enclosed in braces ({ and }) to indicate the extent to which declarations and control structures apply.

As an imperative language, C depends on statements to do most of the work. Most statements are expression statements which simply evaluate an expression; as a side effect, variables may receive new values. Control-flow statements are also available for conditional or iterative execution, constructed with reserved keywords such as if, else, switch, do, while, and for. Arbitrary jumps within a function are possible with goto. A variety of built-in operators perform primitive arithmetic, Boolean logical, comparative, bitwise logical, and array indexing operations and assignment. Expressions can also invoke functions, including a large number of standard library functions, for performing many common tasks.

Operator precedence

Main article: Operators in C and C++

What follows is the list of C operators sorted from highest to lowest priority. Operators of same priority are presented on the same line. "R→L" associativity means that adjacent operators of the same priority are executed from right to left, and conversely for "L→R".

Class Associativity Operators
Select L→R (...) [...] -> .
Unary R→L ! ~ + - * & (type) sizeof ++ --
Binary arithmetical L→R * /  %
Binary arithmetical L→R + -
Shift L→R << >>
Comparison L→R < <= > >=
Comparison L→R ==  !=
Binary bitwise L→R &
Binary bitwise L→R ^
Binary bitwise L→R |
Binary boolean L→R &&
Binary boolean L→R ||
Ternary R→L ?...:
Assignments R→L = += -= *= /= &= |= ^= <<= >>=
Sequence L→R ,

"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 when 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) in between the parentheses indicates that the main function takes no arguments. See also void.[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 beginning of the next 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. 

    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.

If the above code were compiled and executed, it would do the following:

  • Print the string "hello, world" onto the standard output device (typically but not always a terminal),
  • Move the current position indicator to the beginning of the next line, and
  • Return a "successful" exit status to the calling process (such as a command shell or script).

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.)

Pointers

C also allows 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 the data stored at the address pointed to, or to invoke the pointed-to function. Pointers can be manipulated using normal assignments and also pointer arithmetic. The run-time representation of a pointer value is typically a raw memory address, 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. 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 *) also exist and 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 possible, although they can easily be (and in fact implicitly are) converted to and from any other object pointer type.

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.

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.)

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 has a small amount of overhead during initialization, 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 hassle of manually allocating and releasing storage. Unfortunately, many data structures can grow in size at runtime; 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).

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.

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 achieve 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.

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.

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.

C++

Main article: C++

The C++ programming language was derived from C and is Bjarne Stroustrup's answer to adding 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 relevant exceptions (mostly of stronger typing restriction; see Compatibility of C and C++ for an exhaustive list of differences).

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++. Among other things, it does not provide multiple inheritance.

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. Objective-C and C++ differ in philosophies – see the Objective-C article for details.

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.

Notes

  1. ^ C was used to rewrite an earlier version of Unix that had been written in assembler. "History of the C Programming Language". Retrieved 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 2006-07-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ "Choosing the right programming language". Wikibooks. 2006. Retrieved 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 can also take two arguments, int argc and char *argv[], respectively. These are used to handle command line arguments.

References

  • Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie: The C Programming Language. Also known as K&R — The original book on C.
    • 1st, Prentice Hall 1978; ISBN 0-13-110163-3. Pre-ANSI C.
    • 2nd, Prentice Hall 1988; ISBN 0-13-110362-8. ANSI C.
  • ISO/IEC 9899. The official C:1999 standard, along with technical corrigenda and a rationale. As of 2005 the latest version is Template:PDFlink.
  • 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.
    • 4th, Prentice Hall 1994; ISBN 0-13-326224-3.
    • 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

See also

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: C Programming

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

Resources

Wikiversity has learning resources about Topic:C

C99

History

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