Introduction to C

Chapter Outline
“Journey of thousand miles always begins
with one step.” Introduction
–Chinese Quotation History of C
Features of C
Applications of C
Conclusion

“Focus on the journey, not on the destination.

Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in
doing it.”
–Greg Anderson

“Time is a companion that goes with us on journey.

It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it
will never come again. What we leave behind is not
as important as how we have lived.”
–Jean Luc Picard
2.1. Introduction
A computer needs to be instructed to perform desired task. For this, programs are written using a special
computer language known as a programming language. Just as in a natural language, a programming
language consists of set of characters, statements and usage rules that allow the user to communicate
with computers. A programming language should follow syntax rules to create an accurate program so
that the computer can yield desired result. One of the most popular programming languages is C.

2.2. History of C
 By 1960, a numerous collection of programming languages had come into existence, almost each
for a specific purpose. E.g., COBOL was being used for commercial applications, FORTRAN for
engineering and scientific applications and so on.
 At this stage, the people started thinking about the language that can program all possible
applications. Therefore, an International committee was set up to develop such a language. This
committee came out with a language called ALGOL 60 in 1960. However, ALGOL 60 never really
became popular because it seemed too general.
 To reduce this generality, a new language called Combined Programming Language (CPL) was
developed at Cambridge University in 1963. However, CPL turned out to be so big, having so many
features, that it was hard to learn and difficult to implement.
 Basic Combined Programming Language (BCPL) was developed by Martin Richards at
Cambridge University in 1967. He aimed to solve the problem of many features to learn by bringing
CPL down to its basic good features. But, unfortunately, it turned out to be too less powerful and
too specific.
 Around the same time, a language called B was written by Ken Thompson at American Telegraph
and Teli-Communications’ (AT&T) Bell laboratories, as a further simplification of CPL in 1970. But,
like BCPL, B also turned out to be a very specific.
 Dennis Ritchie inherited the features of both B and BCPL, added some of his own and developed a
new programming language, C, in 1972.
 For many years, the defacto standard for C was the version supplied with the UNIX. In summer of
1983, a committee was established to create an ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
standard that would define the C language. The ANSI C standard was finally adopted in 1989. The
standard was also adopted by ISO (International Standards Organization) and the resulting
standard was typically referred to as ANSI/ISO standard C. The version of C defined by the 1989
standard is commonly referred to as C89.
 The work on C continued quietly along, with a new standard fir C being developed. The end result
was the 1999 standard C (C99). In general, C99 retained nearly all of the features of C89. The C99
standardization committee focused on two main areas: the addition of several numeric libraries and
the development of some special-use, but highly innovative, new features, such as variable –length
arrays. These innovations have once again put C at the forefront of the computer language
development.
2.3. Features of C
1. C is a middle-level language.
High-level languages have been designed to give better programming efficiency. i.e., faster program
development.
Low-level languages have been designed to give better machine efficiency. i.e., faster program execution.
C stands in between these two categories. Hence, it is often called as a middle-level level language, since
it was developed to have both: a relatively good programming efficiency and relatively good machine
efficiency.

2. C is modular (or) C is procedure-oriented programming language.

C is modular. The C code should be written in routines called functions. These functions can be reused in
other applications or programs. By passing pieces of information to these functions, we can create useful
and reusable code.

3. C is a language of few words.

C contains a handful of terms called keywords (some times called as reserved words), which serve as the
base on which the language’s functionality is built. High-level languages have many more keywords (e.g.,
BASIC has more than 100 keywords). C has 37 keywords (C89 standard defined 32 and C99 standard
defined 5 more).

4. C is a portable language.
Portability means the ability of executing a program on one machine that was written on another machine.
A C program written on one computer system (e.g., an IBM Pc) can be compiled and run on another
system (e.g., a DEC VAX system) with little or no modification.

5. C is a powerful and flexible language.

What you can accomplish with C is limited only by our imagination. The language itself places no
constraints on us. C is used for projects as diverse as operating systems, word processors, graphics,
spreadsheets and even compilers for other languages.

6. C is a programmer’s language.
Surprisingly, not all computer programming languages are for programmers. E.g., BASIC was created
essentially to allow non-programmers to program a computer to solve relatively simple problems. In
contrast, C was created, influenced and field-tested by working programmers. The end result is that C
gives the programmer what the programmer wants: few restrictions, few complaints, block-structure,
stand-alone functions and compact set of keywords. C helps the programmer to write system programs
and end-user applications too.
2.4. Applications of C
 The languages such as C++ or Java is evolved from the basic language C. Learning these
languages is made easy if we had the idea of the basic concepts of programming language that
were introduced in C.
 Major parts of popular operating systems like Windows, UNIX, Linux is still written in C. Even

today, when it comes to performance (Speed of execution), nothing beats C. Moreover, if one is to
extend the operating system to work with new devices, one needs to write device driver programs.
These programs are exclusively written in C.
 Mobile devices like cellular phones and palm tops are becoming increasingly popular. Also, common
consumer devices like microwave ovens, washing machines and digital cameras are getting
smarter by the day. This smartness comes from a microprocessor, an operating system and a
program embedded in these devices. These programs not only have to run fast, but also have to
work in limited amount of memory. No wonder that such programs are written in C. With these
constraints on time and space, C is the language of choice while building such operating systems
and programs.
 Many popular games have been built using C. We must have seen several professional 3D
computer games where the user navigates some object, say a spaceship and fire bullets at the
invaders. The essence of all such games is speed. Needless to say, such games won’t become
popular, if they take a long time to move the spaceship or to fire a bullet. To match the
expectations of the player, the game has to react fast to the user inputs. This where C scores more
over other languages.
 At times, one is required to very closely interact with the hardware devices. Since C provides
several language elements that make this interaction feasible without compromising the
performance, it is the preferred choice of the programmers.

2.5. Conclusion
C is a middle-level programming language that was developed by Dennis Ritchie at AT&T’s Bell labs, USA
in 1972. C language is procedure-oriented, easy-to-learn, portable, flexible and a programmer’s language
developed by working programmers. C acts as a base language for other languages such as C++ and
Java. By using C language, one can write simple application programs to tedious system programs that
interact with hardware. Embedded systems programming is best carried out with C.