Reema Thareja
A P P E N D I X Versions of C
D.1 K&R C
In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published
the first edition of The C Programming Language. Their
book, known 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.
However, the second edition of the book covers the later
ANSI C standard. K&R introduced several language
features such as:
standard I/O library
long int data type
unsigned int data type
compound assignment operators of the form = op (such
as = ) were changed to the form op = to remove the
semantic ambiguity created by such constructs. For
example, count = 1, which was incorrectly interpreted
as count = 1.
Even after the publication of the 1989 C standard,
K&R C was considered to be the essential component of
C required by a C compiler. The C programmers restricted
themselves to use K&R C when maximum portability
was desired, since many older compilers were still in use,
and because carefully written K&R C code can be legal
Standard C as well.
In early versions of C, only those functions had to be
declared which returned a non-integer value and were
used before the function definition. A function that did not
have any previous declaration was assumed to return an
integer (if its value was used).
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In K&R C, function declarations did not include
any information about function arguments. Therefore,
function parameter type checks were not performed.
However, 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 or types of arguments. This led to the
development of separate tools such as Unixs lint utility
that (among other things) could check for consistency of
functions used across multiple source files.
After several years of publication of K&R C, a number
of unofficial features were added to the language that
was 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
enumerated types
Finally the popularity of K&R C, large number of extensions,
lack of agreement on a standard library, and the fact that not
even the Unix compilers precisely implemented the K&R
specification led to the standardization of the language.
D.2 ANSI C
ANSI C is the standard published by the American
National Standards Institute (ANSI) for the C programm-
ing language. Software developers using C language to
develop their programs are encouraged to conform to
the requirements stated in the document, as it encourages
easily portable code.
Reema Thareja
History of ANSI C and ISO C
The first standard for C was published by ANSI. Although
this document was subsequently adopted by International
Organization for Standardization (ISO) and subsequent
revisions published by ISO have been adopted by ANSI,
the name ANSI C (rather than ISO C) is still more widely
used. Some software developers call it as ISO C, whereas
some tend to be neutral and use the term Standard C.
C89
In 1983, the American National Standards Institute formed
a committee, X3J11, to establish a standard specification of
the C language. This standard was completed in 1989 and
it is this version of C that is commonly known as ANSI
C, or sometimes C89 (to distinguish it from C99).
C90
In the year 1990, the ANSI C standard together with a few
minor modifications was adopted by the Inter-national
Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 9899:1990.
This version came to be known as C90. Therefore, the terms
C89 and C90 refer to essentially the same language.
C99
In March 2000, ANSI adopted the ISO/IEC 9899:1999
standard. This standard came to be popular as C99 which
is the current standard for C programming language.
Today, ANSI C is supported by almost all the widely used
compilers. Needless to say, these days most of the C code
being written is based on ANSI C. Any program written
only in standard C and without any hardware dependent
assumptions is virtually guaranteed to compile correctly
on any platform with a conforming C implementation. In
the absence of such precautions, programs may compile
only on a certain platform or with a particular compiler.
Compliance Detectability
To mitigate the differences between K&R C and the ANSI
C standard, the __STDC__ (standard c) macro can be
used to split code into ANSI and K&R sections.
#if __STDC__
// use code that can use new features
#else
// use code that still uses obsolete
features
#endif
D.3 C99
C99 is a modern version of the C programming language.
It extends the previous version (C89) to make better use
of available computer hardware and to utilize the latest
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Computer Fundamentals and Programming in C, 2e
advances in compiler technology. The extensions in C99
are helpful to the programmers because they provide:
convenient ways of expressing particular algorithm
constructs
better control for numerical purposes, for directing
optimizations, etc.
History
After ANSI C was developed, the C language specification
remained relatively static for some time, and C++
continued to evolve, largely during its own standardization
effort. Although a new standard for the C language was
developed in 1995, but it was done 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 that
resulted in the publication of ISO/IEC 9899:1999 in 1999.
This standard is commonly referred to as C99. It was
adopted as an ANSI standard in May 2000.
Design
C99 is mostly backward compatible with C90 but is stricter
in some ways. In particular, a declaration that does not have a
type specifier is no longer assumed to be int. The C standards
committee decided that it was more important for the compiler
to diagnose inadvertent omission of the type specifier than
to silently process legacy code that relied on implicit int.
Practically, the compilers are likely to display a warning while
compiling, assume int and continue translating the program.
C99 also added certain new features, many of which had
already been implemented as extensions in several compilers:
Inline functions
Intermingled declarations and code. With this,
a variable declaration is no longer restricted to
file scope or the start of a compound statement (block)
Addition of new data types, such as: long, long int,
boolean, and a complex type to represent complex
numbers
Arrays of variable-length
Support for single-line comments beginning with //
Addition of new library functions, such as snprintf
Addition of new header files such as stdbool.h and
inttypes.h
Addition of type-generic math functions (in tgmath.h)
Enhanced support for IEEE floating point
Designated initializers
Compound literals
Support for macros that have variable arity
Reema Thareja
Addition of restrict type qualifier that allows more
aggressive code optimization
Addition of universal character names to enable user
variables to contain characters other than the standard
character set
Future work
After the ratification of the 1999 C standard, the standards
working group has prepared technical reports specifying
improved support for embedded processing, additional
character data types (Unicode support), and library
functions with improved bounds checking. Effort is still
on to make technical reports addressing decimal
floating point, additional mathematical special functions,
and additional dynamic memory allocation functions.
Moreover, the C and C++ standards committees have been
collaborating on specifications for threaded programming.
In 2007, effort has also started in anticipation of another
revision of the C standard, informally called C1X. The
C standards committee has laid guidelines that restrict
the adoption of new features that have not been tested by
existing implementations.
D.4 C1X
C1X is the unofficial name given to the planned new
standard for the C programming language. The new
standard will replace the existing C standard. Although,
the new standard is not yet finalized, the most recent
working draft, N1494, was published in June 2010 which
includes several changes to the C99 language and library
specifications such as:
Specification of alignment such as _Align specifier,
alignof operator, aligned_alloc function
Support for multi-threading by having _Thread_local
storage-class specifier, <threads.h> header file
that includes thread creation/management functions,
mutex, condition variable and thread-specific storage
functionality
Enhanced support for Unicode by having char16_t and
char32_t types for storing UTF-16/UTF-32 encoded
data, including the corresponding u and U string literal
prefixes and conversion functions in <uchar.h>
Removal of the gets()
Interfaces for checking bounds
Analysability features
D.5 LANGUAGES RELATED TO C
The programming language C has directly or indirectly
influenced many other computer languages like Java,
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Perl, PHP, JavaScript, LPC, C#, and Unixs C Shell. The
most pervasive influence has been syntactical as all of the
languages mentioned above combines the statement and
(more or less recognizably) expression syntax of C with
type systems, data models, and/or large-scale program
structures that differ from those of C, sometimes radically.
The object-oriented languages such as C++ and
Objective-C that had became popular were originally
implemented as source-to-source compilers, i.e. source
code was translated into C, and then compiled with a C
compiler.
Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++ to provide 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. Usually considered as a superset of C,
C++ now supports most of C programming, with a few
exceptions.
Unlike C++, which is generally backward compatible
with C, the D language makes a clean break with C while
maintaining the same general syntax. The D language
abandons several features of C which Walter Bright (the
designer of D) considered undesirable, including the
C preprocessor and trigraphs. However, some of Ds
extensions to C overlaps with those of C++.
The object oriented programming language
Objective-C is a strict superset of C that permits object-
oriented features using a hybrid dynamic/static typing
paradigm. Objective-C derives its syntax from both C
and Smalltalk. For example, the syntax that involves
preprocessing, expressions, function declarations, and
function calls is inherited from C, while the syntax for object-
oriented features was originally taken from Smalltalk.
Limbo is a computer programming language
developed by the same team at Bell Labs that was
responsible for C and Unix. It not only retains some of
the syntax and the general style of C but also introduced
garbage collection, CSP-based concurrency, and other
major innovations.
Python has a different sort of C heritage. Although the
syntax and semantics of Python are strikingly different
from C the most commonly used Python implementation,
CPython, is an open source C program. This enables C
programmers to extend Python with C, or embed Python
into C programs. This close relationship among other
factors has resulted in Pythons success as a general-use
dynamic language.
Perl is another popular programming language rooted in
C. Perls syntax closely follows the C syntax. Moreover,
the standard Perl implementation is written in C and
supports extensions written in C.
Reema Thareja
D.6 PROS AND CONS OF C LANGUAGE
Advantages of C Language
C has always been one of the most important of all
computer programming languages that have been
developed so far. Programming with C language has the
following advantages:
It is the most widely used language for writing system
software (i.e., operating systems, other programming
languages, and compilers).
It is a very popular language for writing application
programs.
It is a portable language and is easily available on many
machines. Programs written in standard C can therefore,
run on any of them.
It is a procedural language. Therefore, the programmer
can give step-by-step instructions for the CPU or other
processors.
It is an efficient programming language.
It is a flexible language.
It has small memory requirements to store the program.
Programs written in C are capable of exploiting multi-
user and multi-tasking features.
It provides support for handling data stored in files.
Programs written in C can be used for inter-process
communication (for example, by using pipes).
It has an extensive set of libraries to provide easy access
to useful functions.
Disadvantages of C Language
Besides the key advantages, C language has the following
shortcomings:
It follows the philosophyProgrammers knows what
to do. It does not support error detection, i.e., C language
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does not help, assist, or warn you about anything,
unless there is some syntactical error. Programming
pitfalls such as type mismatch, macro redefinition, or
arrays index out of bound, etc., are not detected by the
language.
It supports extensive use of pointers. However, in modern
programming languages, pointers are avoided as they
have proven to be insecure in certain domains.
It does not have efficient garbage collection.
It is a procedural language. This traditional approach to
solve problems is more time consuming and difficult to
understand.
C compilers generally do not check variable types on
memory pointed to by pointers. So an error in pointer
arithmetic can result in pointing to invalid values that the
compiler cannot check. Therefore, it is the responsibility
of the programmer to do any such checking. This calls
for careful design and implementation of programs.
Many programmers find it difficult to understand
the concept of pointers. Since a good program
must be readable by other people, a potential confusion
can lead to future maintenance-induced code errors.
C programs dealing with pointers are often prone to
errors.
C language does not support inheritance. Hence, the
programmer has to write a lot of code, from scratch,
which is very time consuming.
Conclusion C is a powerful language that is widely
used for developing system software. It is a universal
programming language, which considerably eases the
work of a professional programmer.