Overview of C

“C’ seems a strange name for a programming language but it is one of the most widely used languages in the world. C was introduced by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 at Bell Laboratories as a successor of the language called B (Basic Combined Programming Language – BCPL). Since C was developed along with the UNIX operating system it is strongly associated with UNIX. UNIX was developed at Bell Laboratories and it was written almost entirely in C.

For many years, C was used mainly in academic environments. However with the release of C compilers for commercial use and increasing popularity of UNIX, it began to gain wide-spread interest among computer professionals. Various languages such as C++, Visual C++, Java and C# have branched away from C by adding object-orientation and GUI features. Today C compilers are available for a number of operating systems including all flavours of UNIX, Linux, MS-DOS, Windows and Apple Mac.

C is a robust language whose rich set of built-in functions and operations can be used to write any complex program. C is well suited to write both commercial applications and system software since it incorporates features of high-level languages and Assembly language. Programs written in C are efficient and fast. Most C programs are fairly portable ; that is with little or no modification and compiling, C programs can be executed on different operating systems. The syntax and coding style of C is simple and well structured. Due to this reason most of the modern languages such as C++, Java and C# inherit C coding style . Therefore it is one of the best languages to learn the art of programming. C is also suitable for many complex engineering applications.