C is a procedural programming language. It was initially developed by Dennis Ritchie in the year 1972. It was mainly developed as a system programming language to write an operating system. The main features of C language include low-level access to memory, a simple set of keywords, and clean style, these features make C language suitable for system programmings like an operating system or compiler development.
Facts about C
- C was invented to write an operating system called UNIX.
- C is a successor of B language which was introduced around the early 1970s.
- The language was formalized in 1988 by the American National Standard Institute (ANSI).
- The UNIX OS was totally written in C.
- Today C is the most widely used and popular System Programming Language.
- Most of the state-of-the-art software have been implemented using C.
- Today’s most popular Linux OS and RDBMS MySQL have been written in C.
Applications of C Programming
C was initially used for system development work, particularly the programs that make-up the operating system. C was adopted as a system development language because it produces code that runs nearly as fast as the code written in assembly language. Some examples of the use of C are –
- Operating Systems
- Language Compilers
- Assemblers
- Text Editors
- Print Spoolers
- Network Drivers
- Modern Programs
- Databases
- Language Interpreters
- Utilities
Features of ‘C’ Programming Language:
- Procedural Language
- Fast and Efficient
- Modularity
- Statically Type
- General-Purpose Language
- Rich set of built-in Operators
- Libraries with rich Functions
- Middle-Level Language
- Portability
- Easy to Extend
Let us see the features one by one:
In a procedural language like C step by step predefined instructions are carried out. A c program may contain more than one function to perform a particular task. New people to programming will think that this is the only way of a particular programming language works. There are other programming paradigms as well in the programming world. Most of the commonly used paradigm is an object-oriented programming language.
Newer languages like java, python offers more features than c programming language but due to additional processing in these languages, their performance rate gets down effectively. C programming language as the been middle-level language provides programmers access to direct manipulation with the computer hardware but higher-level languages do not allow this. That’s one of the reasons C language is considered as the first choice to start learning programming languages. It’s fast because statically typed languages are faster than dynamically typed languages.
The concept of storing of C programming language code in the form of libraries for further future uses is known as modularity. This programming language van does very little on its own most of its power is held by its libraries. C language has it’s own library to solve common problems like in this we can use a particular function by using a header file stored in its library.
C programming language is a statically typed language. Meaning the type of variable is checked at the time of compilation but not at run time. Means each time a programmer type a program they have to mention the type of variables used.
From system programming to photo editing software, C programming language is used in various applications. Some of the common applications where it’s used are as follows:
- Operating systems: Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, OXS
- Databases: PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL, MS SQL Server, etc.
Rich set of built-in Operators:
It is a diversified language with a rich set of built-in operators that are used in writing complex or simplified C programs.
Libraries with rich Functions:
Robust libraries and functions in C help even a beginner coder to code with ease.
As it is a middle-level language so it has the combined form of both capabilities of assembly language and features of the high-level language.
C language is lavishly portable as programs that are written in C language can run and compile on any system with either none or small changes.
Programs written in C language can be extended means when a program is already written in it then some more features and operations can be added to it.