Introduction

C is a structured programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie in 1973 at Bell Laboratories. It is one of the most popular computer languages today because of its structure, high-level abstraction, machine independent features. C language was developed with UNIX operating system.

Origin of C Language

C language has evolved from three different structured language ALGOL, BCPL and B Language. It uses many concepts from these languages and introduced many new concepts such as data types, structure, Pointer, Array etc. In 1988, the language was formalised by American National Standard Institute (ANSI).

In 1990, a version of C language was approved by the International Standard Organization (ISO) and that version of C is also referred to as C89. It was developed to overcome the problems of previous languages such as B, BCPL etc.

About Dennis Ritchie

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie was born September 9, 1941 in Bronxville, New York. Ritchie received a BS degree in Physics in 1963 and a PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1967 from Harvard University. While a graduate student, Ritchie had a part-time job at MIT Project MAC’s Multicast (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) time-sharing project.

Features of C Language

1. C language is a robust language with rich set of built-in functions and operators that can be used to write any complex program.

2. The C compiler combines the capabilities of an assembly language with features of a high-level language.

3. Programs written in C language are efficient and fast. This is due to its variety of data type and powerful operators.

4. C language is many time faster than BASIC.

5. C language is highly portable this means that programs once written can be run on another machines with little or no modification.

6. C language is easy to extend.

7. C language is the most widely used language in operating systems and embedded system development today.