C Language: Introduction

This C tutorial provides an introduction and background to the C language.

Description

C is a very powerful language developed at Bell Laboratories in 1970. At the time, UNIX was written in assembly language which was extremely difficult to debug and maintain. The developers of UNIX decided that a higher level language than assembly was required for further development of UNIX. This is how the language C was born.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, C continued to evolve growing past its UNIX roots to finally become an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard in 1989.

C has become the basis for many other languages such as C++, Objective C, and Concurrent C.

C primarily focuses on:

• Efficiency - Although C's compiled source code is larger in size than assembly, it is generally much smaller in size than other languages.
• Portability - Due to the core language being ANSI standardized, software written in ANSI C can generally be compiled and run on machines ranging from PCs to mainframe computers. It is possible, however, for developers to write non-portable programs if they choose.
• Flexibility - Since C is a low level language, it can be incorporated into small embedded systems or large systems. C has very few restrictions on how/where it is used.

One of the biggest strengths of the C language is its standard library. This library contains hundreds of functions providing string manipulation, input/output and other utilities that are available to developers on all platforms.

Now let's learn more about the C language.