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Contents derived from the Wikipedia article on C Programming

C (programming language)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the original edition that served for many years as an informal specification of the language.

Paradigm: imperative (procedural) systems implementation language

Appeared in: 1972

Developer: Dennis Ritchie & Bell Labs

Typing discipline: static, weak

Major implementations: GCC, MSVC, Borland C, Watcom C

Dialects: ObjC, C++

Influenced by: B (BCPL,CPL), Algol68, Assembly, Pascal

Influenced: awk, csh, C++, ObjC, BitC, D, Concurrent C, Java, Javascript

C is a general-purpose, 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 operating systems, and is now one of the most widely used programming languages. C also has had a great influence on many other popular languages,[2] especially C++, which was originally designed as an enhancement to C. It is the most commonly used programming language for writing system software,[3][4] though it is also widely used for writing applications.

Contents

1 Philosophy

2 Characteristics

3 History

3.1 Early developments

3.2 K&R C

3.3 ANSI C and ISO C

3.4 C99

4 Usage

5 Syntax

5.1 "hello, world" example

5.2 Data structures

5.2.1 Pointers

5.2.2 Arrays

5.2.3 Array↔pointer interchangeability

5.3 Memory management

6 Libraries

7 Criticism

8 Tools for mitigating issues with C

9 Related languages

9.1 C++

9.2 Objective-C

10 Notes

11 References

12 See also

13 External links

13.1 Tutorials

13.2 Resources

13.3 Optimization techniques

13.4 C99

13.5 Support

13.6 History

Philosophy

C is a minimalistic programming language. Among its design goals were that it could be compiled in a straightforward manner using a relatively simple compiler, provide low-level access to memory, generate only a few machine language instructions for each of its core language elements, and not require extensive run-time support. As a result, C code is suitable for many systems-programming applications that had traditionally been implemented 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 an ALGOL-based language, C has the following characteristics:

A procedural programming paradigm, with facilities for structured programming

Lexical variable scope and recursion

A static type system which prevents many meaningless operations

Function parameters are generally passed by value (pass-by-reference is achieved in C by explicitly passing pointer values)

Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct in C) which allow related data elements to be combined and manipulated as a unit

A small set (around 30) of reserved keywords

C also has the following specific properties:

Weak typing — for instance, characters can be used as integers (similar to assembly)

Low-level access to computer memory via machine addresses and typed pointers

Function pointers allow 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.

A simple, small core language, with functionality such as mathematical functions and file handling provided by library routines

C discarded the well established logical connectives and and or of most other ALGOL derivatives and replaced them with && and ||, which

Were invented in order to make bit-wise operations (& and |) syntactically distinct — C's predecessor B used & and | for both meanings

Never evaluate the right operand if the result can be determined from the left alone (Minimal evaluation)

C popularized the controversial decision to free the equal-sign for assignment use by replacing = with == (inherited from B).

C lacks features found in some other systems implementation languages:

No non-scalar operations such as copying of arrays or strings (old versions of C did not even copy structs automatically)

No automatic garbage collection

No bounds checking of arrays

No semi-dynamic (i.e. stacked, runtime-sized) arrays until the C99 standard (despite not requiring garbage collection)

No syntax for ranges, such as the A..B notation used in both newer and older languages

No nested function definitions (although some compilers provide them, for example, GCC)

No formal closures or functions as parameters (only function and variable pointers)

No generators or coroutines; intra-thread control flow consists of nested function calls, except for the use of the longjmp or setcontext library functions

No exception handling; standard library functions signify error conditions with the global errno variable and/or special return values

Rudimentary support for modular programming

No compile-time polymorphism in the form of function or operator overloading; only rudimentary support for generic programming

No support for object-oriented programming; in particular, no support for polymorphism, inheritance and limited (inter-module only) support for encapsulation, even though there are libraries offering object systems for C, and many object-oriented languages are themselves written in C

No native support for multithreading and networking, though these facilities are provided by popular libraries

No standard libraries for graphics and several other application programming needs

Although the list of built-in features C lacks is long, this has contributed significantly to its acceptance, as new C compilers can be developed quickly for new platforms. The relatively low-level nature of the language affords the programmer close control over what the program is doing, while allowing solutions that can be specially tailored and aggressively optimized for a particular platform. This allows the code to run efficiently on very limited hardware, such as mass-produced consumer embedded systems, which today are as capable as the general-purpose machines originally used to implement C.

A number of the above missing features are available through the use of third party libraries. Most object oriented functions include a special "this" pointer, which refers to the current object. By passing this pointer as a function argument in C, the same functionality can be performed in C. For example, in C++ one might write:

stack->push(val);

while in C, one would write:

push(stack,val);

where the stack argument of C is a pointer to a struct which is equivalent to the this pointer of C++, which is a pointer to an object.

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 video-game. 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, the entire 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 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:

void functions

Functions returning struct or union types (rather than pointers)

Assignment for struct data types

const qualifier to make an object read-only

Enumerated types

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

It has been suggested that ANSI C be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

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.

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

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.

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 in sometimes incompatible ways (e.g., the complex template class).

GCC, despite its extensive C99 support, is still not a completely compliant implementation; several key features are missing or don't work correctly.[1]

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

Usage

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:

Emit C source code, and one or more other representations: machine code, object code, and/or bytecodes. Examples: some Lisp dialects (Lush), Squeak's C-subset Slang.

Emit C source code only, and no other representation. Examples: Eiffel, Sather; Esterel.

C source code is then input to a C compiler, which then emits 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 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.

"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. However, it might 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 correctly on most modern compilers that are not in compliance mode. However, it produces several warning messages when compiled with a compiler that conforms to the ANSI C standard, and won't compile at all if the compiler strictly conforms to the C99 standard. The current, ANSI C or C99, "hello world" program is written as 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 for that line the entire text of the file to which it refers. In this case, the header stdio.h, which contains declarations for standard input and output functions such as printf, will replace that line. 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 implementation, 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.

{

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 no use was made of it so it will be quietly discarded. (A more careful program might test this value to determine whether the operation succeeded.)

return 0;

This line terminates the execution of the main function and causes it to return the integral 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, then

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). 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 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 unique (and 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 contexts (sizeof array being a notable exception), 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 an array a can be determined as sizeof a / sizeof a[0], provided that the name is "in scope" (visible).

An interesting demonstration of the remarkable interchangeability of pointers and arrays is shown below. These four lines 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 code.

x[i] = 1;

*(x + i) = 1;

*(i + x) = 1;

i[x] = 1; /* strange, but correct */

There is, however, a distinction to be made between arrays and pointer variables. Even though the name of an array is in most 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 collection of functions contained within a single 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, the header file from that library must be declared at the top of a source file, and the library must be linked to the program, which in many cases requires compiler flags (e.g., -lmath).

The most common C library is the C standard library, which is specified by the ISO and ANSI C standard and comes standard with every modern C compiler. 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 C

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 care 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, and automatic garbage collection, that are not a standard part of C.

Many compilers, most notably Visual C++, deal with the long compilation times inflicted by header file inclusion using precompiled headers, a system where declarations are stored in an intermediate format that is quick to parse. Building the precompiled header files in the first place is expensive, but this is generally done only for system header files, which are larger and more numerous than most application header files and also change much less often.

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.

Related languages

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++

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).

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.

Notes

^ C was used to rewrite an earlier version of Unix that had been written in assembler.History of the C Programming Language. Retrieved on 2006-10-31.

^ See Generational list of programming languages

^ Patricia K. Lawlis, c.j. kemp systems, inc. (1997). Guidelines for Choosing a Computer Language: Support for the Visionary Organization. Ada Information Clearinghouse. Retrieved on 2006-07-18.

^ Choosing the right programming language. Wikibooks (2006). Retrieved on 2006-07-18.

References

Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie: The C Programming Language. Also known as K&R — The original book on C.

1st, Prentice Hall 1978; ISBN 0-131-10163-3. Pre-ANSI C.

2nd, Prentice Hall 1988; ISBN 0-131-10362-8. ANSI C.

ISO/IEC 9899. The official C:1999 standard, along with technical corrigenda and a rationale. As of 2005 the latest version is ISO/IEC 9899:TC2.

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 0-133-26224-3.

5th, Prentice Hall 2002; ISBN 0-130-89592-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