C (programming language)

C (/si/, as in the letter c) is a general-purpose, imperative

computer programming language, supporting structured
programming, lexical variable scope and recursion, while
a static type system prevents many unintended operations.
By design, C provides constructs that map eciently to
typical machine instructions, and therefore it has found
lasting use in applications that had formerly been coded
in assembly language, including operating systems, as
well as various application software for computers ranging from supercomputers to embedded systems.

executable code is contained within subroutines, which

are called functions (although not in the strict sense of
functional programming). Function parameters are always passed by value. Pass-by-reference is simulated in
C by explicitly passing pointer values. C program source
text is free-format, using the semicolon as a statement
terminator and curly braces for grouping blocks of statements.
The C language also exhibits the following characteristics:

C was originally developed by Dennis Ritchie between

1969 and 1973 at Bell Labs,[5] and used to re-implement
the Unix operating system.[6] It has since become one
of the most widely used programming languages of all
time,[7][8] with C compilers from various vendors available for the majority of existing computer architectures
and operating systems. C has been standardized by
the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) since
1989 (see ANSI C) and subsequently by the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO).

There is a small, xed number of keywords, including a full set of ow of control primitives: for,
if/else, while, switch, and do/while. There is one
namespace, and user-dened names are not distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil.
There are a large number of arithmetical and logical
operators, such as +, +=, ++, &, ~, etc.
More than one assignment may be performed in a
single statement.

Design

Function return values can be ignored when not

needed.

C is an imperative (procedural) language. It was designed to be compiled using a relatively straightforward

compiler, to provide low-level access to memory, to provide language constructs that map eciently to machine
instructions, and to require minimal run-time support.
Therefore, C was useful for many applications that had
formerly been coded in assembly language, for example
in system programming.

Typing is static, but weakly enforced: all data has a

type, but implicit conversions can be performed; for
instance, characters can be used as integers.
Declaration syntax mimics usage context. C has
no dene keyword; instead, a statement beginning
with the name of a type is taken as a declaration.
There is no function keyword; instead, a function
is indicated by the parentheses of an argument list.

Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage cross-platform programming. A
standards-compliant and portably written C program
can be compiled for a very wide variety of computer
platforms and operating systems with few changes to
its source code. The language has become available
on a very wide range of platforms, from embedded
microcontrollers to supercomputers.

User-dened (typedef) and compound types are

possible.
Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct)
allow related data elements to be accessed and
assigned as a unit.
Array indexing is a secondary notation, dened in terms of pointer arithmetic. Unlike
structs, arrays are not rst-class objects; they
cannot be assigned or compared using single
built-in operators. There is no array keyword, in use or denition; instead, square
brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for example month[11].

Overview

Like most imperative languages in the ALGOL tradition,

C has facilities for structured programming and allows
lexical variable scope and recursion, while a static type
system prevents many unintended operations. In C, all
1

3 HISTORY
Enumerated types are possible with the enum
keyword. They are not tagged, and are freely
interconvertible with integers.
Strings are not a separate data type, but
are conventionally implemented as nullterminated arrays of characters.
Low-level access to computer memory is possible by
converting machine addresses to typed pointers.
Procedures (subroutines not returning values) are a
special case of function, with an untyped return type
void.
Ken Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie (right, the inventor of
Functions may not be dened within the lexical
scope of other functions.

the C programming language)

assembly language on a PDP-7 by Ritchie and Thomp Function and data pointers permit ad hoc run-time son, incorporating several ideas from colleagues. Eventupolymorphism.
ally, they decided to port the operating system to a PDP11. The original PDP-11 version of Unix was developed
A preprocessor performs macro denition, source
in assembly language. The developers were considering
code le inclusion, and conditional compilation.
rewriting the system using the B language, Thompsons
[9]
There is a basic form of modularity: les can be simplied version of BCPL. However Bs inability to
compiled separately and linked together, with con- take advantage of some of the PDP-11s features, notably
trol over which functions and data objects are visible byte addressability, led to C.
to other les via static and extern attributes.
Complex functionality such as I/O, string manipulation, and mathematical functions are consistently
delegated to library routines.

The development of C started in 1972 on the PDP-11

Unix system[10] and rst appeared in Version 2 Unix.[11]
The language was not initially designed with portability
in mind, but soon ran on dierent platforms as well: a
compiler for the Honeywell 6000 was written within the
rst year of Cs history, while an IBM System/370 port
followed soon.[1][10] The name of C simply continued the
alphabetic order started by B.[12]

C does not include some features found in newer, more

modern high-level languages, including object orientation
and garbage collection.
Also in 1972, a large part of Unix was rewritten in C.[13]
By 1973, with the addition of struct types, the C language
had become powerful enough that most of the Unix's
2.1 Relations to other languages
kernel was now in C.
Many later languages have borrowed directly or indirectly from C, including C++, D, Go, Rust, Java,
JavaScript, Limbo, LPC, C#, Objective-C, Perl, PHP,
Python, Verilog (hardware description language),[4] and
Unixs C shell. These languages have drawn many of their
control structures and other basic features from C. Most
of them (with Python being the most dramatic exception) are also very syntactically similar to C in general,
and they tend to combine the recognizable expression and
statement syntax of C with underlying type systems, data
models, and semantics that can be radically dierent.

Unix was one of the rst 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 the Burroughs
B5000 written in ALGOL in 1961.) Circa 1977, Ritchie
and Stephen C. Johnson made further changes to the language to facilitate portability of the Unix operating system. Johnsons Portable C Compiler served as the basis
for several implementations of C on new platforms.[10]

3.2 K&R C

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published

the rst edition of The C Programming Language.[1] This
book, known to C programmers as K&R, served for
3.1 Early developments
many years as an informal specication of the language.
The version of C that it describes is commonly referred
The origin of C is closely tied to the development of to as K&R C. The second edition of the book[14] covers
the Unix operating system, originally implemented in the later ANSI C standard, described below.

History

3.3

ANSI C and ISO C

3
test2 = other_function(); return test2; }
The int type speciers which are commented out could
be omitted in K&R C, but are required in later standards.
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 dierent numbers or
types of arguments. Separate tools such as Unixs lint utility were developed that (among other things) could check
for consistency of function use across multiple source
les.
In the years following the publication of K&R C, several
features were added to the language, supported by compilers from AT&T (in particular PCC[15] ) and some other
vendors. These included:
void functions (i.e., functions with no return value)
functions returning struct or union types (rather than
pointers)

The cover of the book, The C Programming Language, rst edition by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie

K&R introduced several language features:

Standard I/O library
long int data type

assignment for struct data types

enumerated types
The large number of extensions and lack of agreement on
a standard library, together with the language popularity
and the fact that not even the Unix compilers precisely
implemented the K&R specication, led to the necessity
of standardization.

unsigned int data type

Compound assignment operators of the form =op
(such as =-) were changed to the form op= (that is, =) to remove the semantic ambiguity created by constructs such as i =- 10, which had been interpreted
as i =- 10 (decrement i by 10) instead of the possibly
intended i = 10 (let i be 10)

3.3 ANSI C and ISO C

Main article: ANSI C
During the late 1970s and 1980s, versions of C were
implemented for a wide variety of mainframe computers,
minicomputers, and microcomputers, including the IBM
PC, as its popularity began to increase signicantly.

In 1983, the American National Standards Institute

(ANSI) formed a committee, X3J11, to establish a standard specication of C. X3J11 based the C standard on
the Unix implementation; however, the non-portable portion of the Unix C library was handed o to the IEEE
working group 1003 to become the basis for the 1988
POSIX standard. In 1989, the C standard was ratied as
In early versions of C, only functions that returned a non- ANSI X3.159-1989 Programming Language C. This
int value needed to be declared if used before the function version of the language is often referred to as ANSI C,
denition; a function used without any previous declara- Standard C, or sometimes C89.
tion was assumed to return type int, if its value was used.
In 1990, the ANSI C standard (with formatting changes)
For example:
was adopted by the International Organization for Stanlong some_function(); /* int */ other_function(); /* int dardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 9899:1990, which is some*/ calling_function() { long test1; register /* int */ test2; times called C90. Therefore, the terms C89 and C90
test1 = some_function(); if (test1 > 0) test2 = 0; else refer to the same programming language.

Even after the publication of the 1989 ANSI standard, for

many years 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 Standard C as well.

3 HISTORY
__STDC__ macro can be used to split the code into Standard and K&R sections to prevent the use on a K&R Cbased compiler of features available only in Standard C.
After the ANSI/ISO standardization process, the C language specication remained relatively static for several
years. In 1995 Normative Amendment 1 to the 1990 C
standard (ISO/IEC 9899/AMD1:1995, known informally
as C95) was published, to correct some details and to add
more extensive support for international character sets.

3.4 C99
Main article: C99
The C standard was further revised in the late 1990s,
leading to the publication of ISO/IEC 9899:1999 in 1999,
which is commonly referred to as "C99". It has since been
amended three times by Technical Corrigenda.[16]
C99 introduced several new features, including inline
functions, several new data types (including long long
int and a complex type to represent complex numbers),
The cover of the book, The C Programming Language, second variable-length arrays and exible array members, imedition by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie covering ANSI C proved support for IEEE 754 oating point, support for
variadic macros (macros of variable arity), and support
for one-line comments beginning with //, as in BCPL or
ANSI, like other national standards bodies, no longer C++. Many of these had already been implemented as
develops the C standard independently, but defers to extensions in several C compilers.
the international C standard, maintained by the working C99 is for the most part backward compatible with C90,
group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14. National adoption but is stricter in some ways; in particular, a declaration
of an update to the international standard typically occurs that lacks a type specier no longer has int implicitly aswithin a year of ISO publication.
sumed. A standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is deOne of the aims of the C standardization process was
to produce a superset of K&R C, incorporating many
of the subsequently introduced unocial features. The
standards committee also included several additional features such as function prototypes (borrowed from C++),
void pointers, support for international character sets and
locales, and preprocessor enhancements. Although the
syntax for parameter declarations was augmented to include the style used in C++, the K&R interface continued
to be permitted, for compatibility with existing source
code.
C89 is supported by current C compilers, and most C
code being written today is based on it. Any program
written only in Standard C and without any hardwaredependent 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-specic attributes such as the exact size of data
types and byte endianness.

ned with value 199901L to indicate that C99 support

is available. GCC, Solaris Studio, and other C compilers now support many or all of the new features of C99.
The C compiler in Microsoft Visual C++, however, implements the C89 standard and those parts of C99 that
are required for compatibility with C++11.[17]

3.5 C11
Main article: C11 (C standard revision)
In 2007, work began on another revision of the C standard, informally called C1X until its ocial publication on 2011-12-08. The C standards committee adopted
guidelines to limit the adoption of new features that had
not been tested by existing implementations.

The C11 standard adds numerous new features to C

and the library, including type generic macros, anonymous structures, improved Unicode support, atomic operations, multi-threading, and bounds-checked functions.
It also makes some portions of the existing C99 liIn cases where code must be compilable by either brary optional, and improves compatibility with C++.
standard-conforming or K&R C-based compilers, the The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is dened as

4.1

Character set

201112L to indicate that C11 support is available.

3.6

Embedded C

Main article: Embedded C

Historically, embedded C programming requires nonstandard extensions to the C language in order to support exotic features such as xed-point arithmetic, multiple distinct memory banks, and basic I/O operations.
In 2008, the C Standards Committee published a technical report extending the C language[18] to address these
issues by providing a common standard for all implementations to adhere to. It includes a number of features
not available in normal C, such as xed-point arithmetic,
named address spaces, and basic I/O hardware addressing.

Syntax

5
tion, testing, and reinitialization expressions, any or all of
which can be omitted. break and continue can be used
to leave the innermost enclosing loop statement or skip
to its reinitialization. There is also a non-structured goto
statement which branches directly to the designated label
within the function. switch selects a case to be executed
based on the value of an integer expression.
Expressions can use a variety of built-in operators and
may contain function calls. The order in which arguments
to functions and operands to most operators are evaluated
is unspecied. The evaluations may even be interleaved.
However, all side eects (including storage to variables)
will occur before the next "sequence point"; sequence
points include the end of each expression statement, and
the entry to and return from each function call. Sequence
points also occur during evaluation of expressions containing certain operators (&&, ||, ?: and the comma operator). This permits a high degree of object code optimization by the compiler, but requires C programmers
to take more care to obtain reliable results than is needed
for other programming languages.

Kernighan and Ritchie say in the Introduction of The C

Programming Language: C, like any other language, has
Main article: C syntax
its blemishes. Some of the operators have the wrong
precedence; some parts of the syntax could be better.[21]
[19]
C has a formal grammar specied by the C standard.
The C standard did not attempt to correct many of these
Unlike languages such as FORTRAN 77, C source code blemishes, because of the impact of such changes on alis free-form which allows arbitrary use of whitespace to ready existing software.
format code, rather than column-based or text-line-based
restrictions; however, line boundaries do have signicance during the preprocessing phase. Comments may 4.1 Character set
appear either between the delimiters /* and */, or (since
C99) following // until the end of the line. Comments The basic C source character set includes the following
delimited by /* and */ do not nest, and these sequences ASCII characters:
of characters are not interpreted as comment delimiters
if they appear inside string or character literals.[20]
Lowercase and uppercase letters of ISO Basic Latin
Alphabet: az AZ
C source les contain declarations and function denitions. Function denitions, in turn, contain declarations
Decimal digits: 09
and statements. Declarations either dene new types us Graphic characters: ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < =
ing 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.
Whitespace characters: space, horizontal tab,
Keywords such as char and int specify built-in types. Secvertical tab, form feed, newline
tions of code are enclosed in braces ({ and }, sometimes
called curly brackets) to limit the scope of declarations
Newline indicates the end of a text line; it need not corand to act as a single statement for control structures.
respond to an actual single character, although for conveAs an imperative language, C uses statements to spec- nience C treats it as one.
ify actions. The most common statement is an expression statement, consisting of an expression to be evalu- Additional multibyte encoded characters may be used in
ated, followed by a semicolon; as a side eect of the string literals, but they are not entirely portable. The latevaluation, functions may be called and variables may be est C standard (C11) allows multinational Unicode charassigned new values. To modify the normal sequential acters to be embedded portably within C source text by
execution of statements, C provides several control-ow using \uXXXX or \UXXXXXXXX encoding (where the
statements identied by reserved keywords. Structured X denotes a hexadecimal character), although this feature
programming is supported by if(-else) conditional exe- is not yet widely implemented.
cution and by do-while, while, and for iterative execu- The basic C execution character set contains the
tion (looping). The for statement has separate initializa- same characters, along with representations for alert,

backspace, and carriage return. Run-time support for extended character sets has increased with each revision of
the C standard.

HELLO, WORLD EXAMPLE

reference and dereference: &, *, [ ]

sequencing: ,
subexpression grouping: ( )

4.2

Reserved words

type conversion: (typename)

C89 has 32 reserved words, also known as keywords, C uses the = operator, reserved in mathematics to express
which are the words that cannot be used for any purposes equality, to indicate assignment, following the precedent
of Fortran and PL/I, but unlike ALGOL and its derivaother than those for which they are predened:
tives. The similarity between Cs operator for assignC99 reserved ve more words:
ment and that for equality (==) has been criticized as it
makes it easy to accidentally substitute one for the other.
C11 reserved seven more words:[22]
In many cases, each may be used in the context of the
Most of the recently reserved words begin with an unother without a compilation error (although some comderscore followed by a capital letter, because identiers
pilers produce warnings). For example, the conditional
of that form were previously reserved by the C standard
expression in if(a=b+1) is true if a is not zero after the
for use only by implementations. Since existing proassignment.[24] Additionally, Cs operator precedence is
gram source code should not have been using these idennon-intuitive, such as == binding more tightly than & and
tiers, it would not be aected when C implementations
| in expressions like x & 1 == 0, which would need to be
started supporting these extensions to the programming
written (x & 1) == 0 to be properly evaluated.[25]
language. Some standard headers do dene more convenient synonyms for underscored identiers. The language
previously included a reserved word called entry, but this
was seldom implemented, and has now been removed as 5 Hello, world example
a reserved word.[23]
The "hello, world" example, which appeared in the rst
edition of K&R, has become the model for an introduc4.3 Operators
tory program in most programming textbooks, regardless
of programming language. The program prints hello,
Main article: Operators in C and C++
world to the standard output, which is usually a terminal
or screen display.
C supports a rich set of operators, which are symbols used The original version was:[26]
within an expression to specify the manipulations to be
performed while evaluating that expression. C has oper- main() { printf(hello, world\n); }
ators for:
A standard-conforming hello, world program
is:[lower-alpha 1]
arithmetic: +, -, *, /, %
#include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf(hello,
assignment: =
world\n); }
augmented assignment: +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, &=, |=,
^=, <<=, >>=
The rst line of the program contains a preprocessing di bitwise logic: ~, &, |, ^
bitwise shifts: <<, >>
boolean logic: !, &&, ||
conditional evaluation: ? :
equality testing: ==, !=
calling functions: ( )
increment and decrement: ++, - member selection: ., ->
object size: sizeof
order relations: <, <=, >, >=

rective, indicated by #include. This causes the compiler

to replace that line with the entire text of the stdio.h standard header, which contains declarations for standard input and output functions such as printf. The angle brackets surrounding stdio.h indicate that stdio.h is located using a search strategy that prefers headers in the compilers
include path to other headers having the same name; double quotes are used to include local or project-specic
header les.
The next line indicates that a function named main is being dened. The main function serves a special purpose
in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main
function to begin program execution. The type specier
int indicates that the value that is returned to the invoker
(in this case the run-time environment) as a result of evaluating the main function, is an integer. The keyword void

6.1

Pointers

as a parameter list indicates that this function takes no integers of equal width requires a conversion of the signed
arguments.[lower-alpha 2]
value to unsigned. This can generate unexpected results
The opening curly brace indicates the beginning of the if the signed value is negative.
denition of the main function.
The next line calls (diverts execution to) a function named
printf, which is supplied from a system library. In this
call, the printf function is passed (provided with) a single
argument, the address of the rst 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 nal 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 a newline character,
which on output signies the end of the current line. The
return value of the printf function is of type int, but it is
silently discarded since it is not used. (A more careful
program might test the return value to determine whether
or not the printf function succeeded.) The semicolon ;
terminates the statement.
The closing curly brace indicates the end of the code
for the main function. According to the C99 specication and newer, the main function, unlike any other function, will implicitly return a status of 0 upon reaching
the } that terminates the function. This is interpreted by
the run-time system as an exit code indicating successful
execution.[27]

Data types

Main article: C variable types and declarations

6.1 Pointers
C supports the use of pointers, a type of reference that
records the address or location of an object or function in memory. Pointers can be dereferenced to access data stored at the address pointed to, or to invoke
a pointed-to function. Pointers can be manipulated using assignment or pointer arithmetic. The run-time representation of a pointer value is typically a raw memory address (perhaps augmented by an oset-within-word
eld), but since a pointers 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.
Pointers are used for many purposes in C. Text strings
are commonly manipulated using pointers into arrays of
characters. Dynamic memory allocation is performed using pointers. Many data types, such as trees, are commonly implemented as dynamically allocated struct objects linked together using pointers. Pointers to functions
are useful for passing functions as arguments to higherorder functions (such as qsort or bsearch) or as callbacks
to be invoked by event handlers.[27]
A null pointer value explicitly points to no valid location. Dereferencing a null pointer value is undened, often resulting in a segmentation fault. Null pointer values
are useful for indicating special cases such as no next
pointer in the nal node of a linked list, or as an error
indication from functions returning pointers. In appropriate contexts in source code, such as for assigning to a
pointer variable, a null pointer constant can be written as
0, with or without explicit casting to a pointer type, or as
the NULL macro dened by several standard headers. In
conditional contexts, null pointer values evaluate to false,
while all other pointer values evaluate to true.

The type system in C is static and weakly typed, which

makes it similar to the type system of ALGOL descendants such as Pascal.[28] There are built-in types for integers of various sizes, both signed and unsigned, oatingpoint numbers, characters, and enumerated types (enum).
C99 added a boolean datatype. There are also derived
types including arrays, pointers, records (struct), and unVoid pointers (void *) point to objects of unspecied
tagged unions (union).
type, and can therefore be used as generic data pointC is often used in low-level systems programming where
ers. Since the size and type of the pointed-to object is
escapes from the type system may be necessary. The not known, void pointers cannot be dereferenced, nor is
compiler attempts to ensure type correctness of most ex- pointer arithmetic on them allowed, although they can
pressions, but the programmer can override the checks in easily be (and in many contexts implicitly are) converted
various ways, either by using a type cast to explicitly con- to and from any other object pointer type.[27]
vert a value from one type to another, or by using pointers
or unions to reinterpret the underlying bits of a data ob- Careless use of pointers is potentially dangerous. Because they are typically unchecked, a pointer variable can
ject in some other way.
be made to point to any arbitrary location, which can
Some nd Cs declaration syntax unintuitive, particularly cause undesirable eects. Although properly used pointfor function pointers. (Ritchies idea was to declare iden- ers point to safe places, they can be made to point to untiers in contexts resembling their use: "declaration re- safe places by using invalid pointer arithmetic; the objects
ects use".)[29]
they point to may be deallocated and reused (dangling
Cs usual arithmetic conversions allow for ecient code to pointers); they may be used without having been initialbe generated, but can sometimes produce unexpected re- ized (wild pointers); or they may be directly assigned
sults. For example, a comparison of signed and unsigned an unsafe value using a cast, union, or through another

7 MEMORY MANAGEMENT

corrupt pointer. In general, C is permissive in allowing

manipulation of and conversion between pointer types,
although compilers typically provide options for various levels of checking. Some other programming languages address these problems by using more restrictive
reference types.

6.2

Arrays

See also: C string

Array types in C are traditionally of a xed, static size
specied 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 librarys malloc function, and treat it as an array. Cs unication of
arrays and pointers means that declared arrays and these
dynamically allocated simulated arrays are virtually interchangeable.

base address incremented by i multiplied by the size of an

element that x points to. Thus, x[i] designates the i+1th
element of the array.
Furthermore, in most expression contexts (a notable exception is as operand of sizeof), the name of an array is
automatically converted to a pointer to the arrays rst 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 rst element is passed. Therefore, although function calls in C use pass-by-value semantics,
arrays are in eect passed by reference.
The size of an element can be determined by applying the
operator sizeof to any dereferenced element of x, as in n
= sizeof *x or n = sizeof x[0], and the number of elements in a declared array A can be determined as sizeof
A / sizeof A[0]. The latter only applies to array names:
variables declared with subscripts (int A[20]). Due to the
semantics of C, it is not possible to determine the entire
size of arrays through pointers to arrays or those created
by dynamic allocation (malloc); code such as sizeof arr
/ sizeof arr[0] (where arr designates a pointer) will not
work since the compiler assumes the size of the pointer
itself is being requested.[32][33] Since array name arguments to sizeof are not converted to pointers, they do not
exhibit such ambiguity. However, arrays created by dynamic allocation are accessed by pointers rather than true
array variables, so they suer from the same sizeof issues
as array pointers.

Since arrays are always accessed (in eect) via pointers,

array accesses are typically not checked against the underlying array size, although some compilers may provide bounds checking as an option.[30] Array bounds violations are therefore possible and rather common in carelessly written code, and can lead to various repercussions, including illegal memory accesses, corruption of
data, buer overruns, and run-time exceptions. If bounds
Thus, despite this apparent equivalence between array
checking is desired, it must be done manually.
and pointer variables, there is still a distinction to be made
C does not have a special provision for declaring between them. Even though the name of an array is, in
multidimensional arrays, but rather relies on recursion most expression contexts, converted into a pointer (to its
within the type system to declare arrays of arrays, which rst element), this pointer does not itself occupy any storeectively accomplishes the same thing. The index val- age; the array name is not an l-value, and its address is a
ues of the resulting multidimensional array can be constant, unlike a pointer variable. Consequently, what
thought of as increasing in row-major order.
an array points to cannot be changed, and it is imposMultidimensional arrays are commonly used in numerical sible to assign a new address to an array name. Array
algorithms (mainly from applied linear algebra) to store contents may be copied, however, by using the memcpy
matrices. The structure of the C array is well suited to this function, or by accessing the individual elements.
particular task. However, since arrays are passed merely
as pointers, the bounds of the array must be known xed
values or else explicitly passed to any subroutine that re- 7 Memory management
quires them, and dynamically sized arrays of arrays cannot be accessed using double indexing. (A workaround One of the most important functions of a programming
for this is to allocate the array with an additional row language is to provide facilities for managing memory and
vector of pointers to the columns.)
the objects that are stored in memory. C provides three
C99 introduced variable-length arrays which address distinct ways to allocate memory for objects:[27]
some, but not all, of the issues with ordinary C arrays.
Static memory allocation: space for the object is
provided in the binary at compile-time; these ob6.3 Arraypointer interchangeability
jects have an extent (or lifetime) as long as the binary which contains them is loaded into memory.
The subscript notation x[i] (where x designates a pointer)
is a syntactic sugar for *(x+i).[31] Taking advantage of
Automatic memory allocation: temporary objects
the compilers knowledge of the pointer type, the address
can be stored on the stack, and this space is autothat x + i points to is not the base address (pointed to by
matically freed and reusable after the block in which
x) incremented by i bytes, but rather is dened to be the
they are declared is exited.

9
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 persist until
subsequently freed for reuse by calling the library
function realloc or free
These three approaches are appropriate in dierent situations and have various tradeos. For example, static
memory allocation has little allocation overhead, automatic allocation may involve slightly more overhead, and
dynamic memory allocation can potentially have a great
deal of overhead for both allocation and deallocation. The
persistent nature of static objects is useful for maintaining state information across function calls, automatic allocation is easy to use but stack space is typically much
more limited and transient than either static memory or
heap space, and dynamic memory allocation allows convenient allocation of objects whose size is known only
at run-time. Most C programs make extensive use of all
three.

a memory leak. Conversely, it is possible for memory to

be freed but continue to be referenced, leading to unpredictable results. Typically, the symptoms will appear in a
portion of the program far removed from the actual error,
making it dicult to track down the problem. (Such issues are ameliorated in languages with automatic garbage
collection.)

8 Libraries

The C programming language uses libraries as its primary method of extension. In C, a library is a set of
functions contained within a single archive le. Each
library typically has a header le, 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, it must include the
librarys header le, and the library must be linked with
the program, which in many cases requires compiler ags
Where possible, automatic or static allocation is usually (e.g., -lm, shorthand for link the math library).[27]
simplest because the storage is managed by the compiler, freeing the programmer of the potentially error- The most common C library is the C standard library,
prone chore of manually allocating and releasing storage. which is specied by the ISO and ANSI C standards and
However, many data structures can change in size at run- comes with every C implementation (implementations
time, and since static allocations (and automatic alloca- which target limited environments such as embedded systions before C99) must have a xed size at compile-time, tems may provide only a subset of the standard library).
there are many situations in which dynamic allocation is This library supports stream input and output, memory alnecessary.[27] Prior to the C99 standard, variable-sized location, mathematics, character strings, and time values.
arrays were a common example of this. (See the article Several separate standard headers (for example, stdio.h)
on malloc for an example of dynamically allocated ar- specify the interfaces for these and other standard library
rays.) Unlike automatic allocation, which can fail at run facilities.
time with uncontrolled consequences, the dynamic allo- Another common set of C library functions are those used
cation functions return an indication (in the form of a null by applications specically targeted for Unix and Unixpointer value) when the required storage cannot be allo- like systems, especially functions which provide an intercated. (Static allocation that is too large is usually de- face to the kernel. These functions are detailed in various
tected by the linker or loader, before the program can standards such as POSIX and the Single UNIX Specieven begin execution.)
cation.
Unless otherwise specied, static objects contain zero or
null pointer values upon program startup. Automatically
and dynamically allocated objects are initialized only if
an initial value is explicitly specied; otherwise they initially have indeterminate values (typically, whatever bit
pattern happens to be present in the storage, which might
not even represent a valid value for that type). If the program attempts to access an uninitialized value, the results
are undened. Many modern compilers try to detect and
warn about this problem, but both false positives and false
negatives can occur.

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 ecient
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.[27]

Another issue is that heap memory allocation has to be

synchronized with its actual usage in any program in order
for it to be reused as much as possible. For example, if
the only pointer to a heap memory allocation goes out of
scope or has its value overwritten before free() is called,
then that memory cannot be recovered for later reuse and
is essentially lost to the program, a phenomenon known as

Tools have been created to help C programmers avoid

some of the problems inherent in the language, such as
statements with undened behavior or statements that are
not a good practice because they are likely to result in unintended behavior or run-time errors.

9 Language tools

Automated source code checking and auditing are benecial in any language, and for C many such tools exist,

10

11

such as Lint. A common practice is to use Lint to detect questionable code when a program is rst written.
Once a program passes Lint, it is then compiled using the
C compiler. Also, many compilers can optionally warn
about syntactically valid constructs that are likely to actually be errors. MISRA C is a proprietary set of guidelines
to avoid such questionable code, developed for embedded
systems.[34]

RELATED LANGUAGES

allows ecient implementations of algorithms and data

structures, which is useful for programs that perform a lot
of computations. For example, the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library, the GNU Scientic Library,
Mathematica and MATLAB are completely or partially
written in C.

Tools such as Purify or Valgrind and linking with libraries containing special versions of the memory allocation functions can help uncover runtime errors in memory
usage.

C is sometimes used as an intermediate language by implementations of other languages. This approach may
be used for portability or convenience; by using C as
an intermediate language, it is not necessary to develop
machine-specic code generators. C has some features,
such as line-number preprocessor directives and optional
superuous commas at the end of initializer lists, which
support compilation of generated code. However, some
of Cs shortcomings have prompted the development of
other C-based languages specically designed for use as
intermediate languages, such as C--.

10

C has also been widely used to implement end-user applications. However, such applications can also be written
in newer, higher-level languages.

There are also compilers, libraries, and operating system

level mechanisms for performing actions that are not a
standard part of C, such as array bounds checking, buer
overow detection, serialization, and automatic garbage
collection.

Uses

11 Related languages
C has directly or indirectly inuenced many later languages such as C#, D, Go, Java, JavaScript, Limbo, LPC,
Perl, PHP, Python, and Unixs C shell. The most pervasive inuence has been syntactical: all of the languages
mentioned combine the statement and (more or less recognizably) expression syntax of C with type systems, data
models and/or large-scale program structures that dier
from those of C, sometimes radically.
Several C or near-C interpreters exist, including Ch and
CINT, which can also be used for scripting.
When object-oriented languages became popular, C++
and Objective-C were two dierent extensions of C that
provided object-oriented capabilities. Both languages
C is widely used for "system programming", including were originally implemented as source-to-source compilimplementing operating systems and embedded system ers; source code was translated into C, and then compiled
applications, due to a combination of desirable charac- with a C compiler.
teristics such as code portability and eciency, ability to
The C++ programming language was devised by Bjarne
access specic hardware addresses, ability to pun types to Stroustrup as an approach to providing object-oriented
match externally imposed data access requirements, and functionality with a C-like syntax.[38] C++ adds greater
low run-time demand on system resources. C can also typing strength, scoping, and other tools useful in objectbe used for website programming using CGI as a gate- oriented programming, and permits generic programway for information between the Web application, the ming via templates. Nearly a superset of C, C++ now
server, and the browser.[36] Some reasons for choosing supports most of C, with a few exceptions.
C over interpreted languages are its speed, stability, and
Objective-C was originally a very thin layer on top of
near-universal availability.[37]
C, and remains a strict superset of C that permits objectOne consequence of Cs wide availability and eciency oriented programming using a hybrid dynamic/static typis that compilers, libraries and interpreters of other pro- ing paradigm. Objective-C derives its syntax from both
gramming languages are often implemented in C. The C and Smalltalk: syntax that involves preprocessing, exprimary implementations of Python, Perl 5 and PHP, for pressions, function declarations, and function calls is inexample, are all written in C.
herited from C, while the syntax for object-oriented feaDue to its thin layer of abstraction and low overhead, C tures was originally taken from Smalltalk.
The TIOBE index graph from 2002 to 2015, showing a comparison of the popularity of various programming languages[35]

11
In addition to C++ and Objective-C, Ch, Cilk and Unied
Parallel C are nearly supersets of C.

12

See also

Comparison of Pascal and C

Comparison of programming languages
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
List of C-based programming languages
List of C compilers

13

Notes

[1] The original example code will compile on most modern

compilers that are not in strict standard compliance mode,
but it does not fully conform to the requirements of either
C89 or C99. In fact, C99 requires that a diagnostic message be produced.
[2] The main function actually has two arguments, int argc
and char *argv[], respectively, which can be used to handle command line arguments. The ISO C standard (section 5.1.2.2.1) requires both forms of main to be supported, which is special treatment not aorded to any
other function.

14

References

[1] Kernighan, Brian W.; Ritchie, Dennis M. (February 1978). The C Programming Language (1st ed.).
Englewood Clis, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-1101633. Regarded by many to be the authoritative reference on
C.
[2] Ritchie (1993): Thompson had made a brief attempt to
produce a system coded in an early version of Cbefore
structuresin 1972, but gave up the eort.
[3] Ritchie (1993): The scheme of type composition
adopted by C owes considerable debt to Algol 68, although
it did not, perhaps, emerge in a form that Algols adherents
would approve of.
[4] Verilog HDL (and C)" (PDF). The Research School of
Computer Science at the Australian National University.
2010-06-03. Retrieved 2013-08-19. 1980s: ; Verilog rst
introduced ; Verilog inspired by the C programming language
[5] Ritchie (1993)
[6] Lawlis, Patricia K. (August 1997). Guidelines for
Choosing a Computer Language: Support for the Visionary Organization. Ada Information Clearinghouse. Retrieved 18 July 2006.

[7] Programming Language Popularity. 2009. Retrieved

16 January 2009.
[8] TIOBE Programming Community Index. 2009. Retrieved 6 May 2009.
[9] Ritchie, Dennis M. (March 1993). The Development of
the C Language. ACM SIGPLAN Notices. 28 (3): 201
208. doi:10.1145/155360.155580.
[10] Johnson, S. C.; Ritchie, D. M. (1978). Portability
of C Programs and the UNIX System. Bell System
Tech. J. 57 (6): 20212048. doi:10.1002/j.15387305.1978.tb02141.x. Retrieved 16 December 2012.
(Note: this reference is an OCR scan of the original, and
contains an OCR glitch rendering IBM 370 as IBM
310.)
[11] McIlroy, M. D. (1987). A Research Unix reader: annotated excerpts from the Programmers Manual, 19711986
(PDF) (Technical report). CSTR. Bell Labs. p. 10. 139.
[12] Ulf Bilting & Jan Skansholm Vgen till C (Swedish)
meaning The Road to C, third edition, Studentlitteratur,
year 2000, page 3. ISBN 91-44-01468-6.
[13] Stallings, William. Operating Systems: Internals and
Design Principles 5th ed, page 91. Pearson Education,
Inc. 2005.
[14] Kernighan, Brian W.; Ritchie, Dennis M. (March 1988).
The C Programming Language (2nd ed.). Englewood
Clis, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-110362-8.
[15] Stroustrup, Bjarne (2002). Sibling rivalry: C and C++
(PDF) (Report). AT&T Labs.
[16] JTC1/SC22/WG14 C. Home page. ISO/IEC. Retrieved 2 June 2011.
[17] Andrew Binstock (October 12, 2011). Interview with
Herb Sutter. Dr. Dobbs. Retrieved September 7, 2013.
[18] TR 18037: Embedded C (PDF). ISO / IEC. Retrieved
26 July 2011.
[19] Harbison, Samuel P.; Steele, Guy L. (2002). C: A Reference Manual (5th ed.). Englewood Clis, NJ: Prentice
Hall. ISBN 0-13-089592-X. Contains a BNF grammar
for C.
[20] Kernighan, Brian W.; Ritchie, Dennis M. (1996). The C
Programming Language (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. p. 192.
ISBN 7 302 02412 X.
[21] Page 3 of the original K&R[1]
[22] ISO/IEC 9899:201x (ISO C11) Committee Draft
[23] Kernighan, Brian W.; Ritchie, Dennis M. (1996). The
C Programming Language (2nd ed.). Prentice Hall. pp.
192, 259. ISBN 7 302 02412 X.
[24] 10 Common Programming Mistakes
Cs.ucr.edu. Retrieved 26 June 2009.

in

C++".

[25] Schultz, Thomas (2004). C and the 8051 (3rd ed.). Otsego, MI: PageFree Publishing Inc. p. 20. ISBN 158961-237-X. Retrieved 10 February 2012.

12

16

16 External links

[26] Page 6 of the original K&R[1]

[27] Klemens, Ben (2013). 21st Century C. O'Reilly Media.
ISBN 1-4493-2714-1.
[28] Feuer, Alan R.; Gehani, Narain H. (March 1982).
Comparison of the Programming Languages C and
Pascal. ACM Computing Surveys. 14 (1): 73
92. doi:10.1145/356869.356872. (subscription required
(help)).
[29] Page 122 of K&R2

[14]

[30] For example, gcc provides _FORTIFY_SOURCE.

Security Features: Compile Time Buer Checks
(FORTIFY_SOURCE)". fedoraproject.org. Retrieved
2012-08-05.
[31] Raymond, Eric S. (11 October 1996). The New Hackers
Dictionary (3rd ed.). MIT Press. p. 432. ISBN 978-0262-68092-9. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
[32] Summit, Steve. comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions 6.23. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
[33] Summit, Steve. comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions 7.28. Retrieved March 6, 2013.
[34] Man Page for lint (freebsd Section 1)". unix.com. 200105-24. Retrieved 2014-07-15.
[35] McMillan, Robert (2013-08-01).
Mojo?". Wired.

Is Java Losing Its

[36] Dr. Dobbs Sourcebook. U.S.A.: Miller Freeman, Inc.

NovemberDecember 1995.
[37] Using C for CGI Programming. linuxjournal.com. 1
March 2005. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
[38] Stroustrup, Bjarne (1993).
A History of C++:
19791991 (PDF). Retrieved 9 June 2011.

Ritchie, Dennis M. (1993). The Development of

the C Language. The second ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference (HOPLII). Cambridge, MA, USA April 2023, 1993:
ACM. pp. 201208. doi:10.1145/154766.155580.
ISBN 0-89791-570-4. Retrieved 2014-11-04.

15

EXTERNAL LINKS

Further reading

Banahan, M.; Brady, D.; Doran, M. (1991). The C

Book (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley.
King, K. N. (April 2008). C Programming: A Modern Approach (2nd ed.). Norton. ISBN 978-0-39397950-3.
Thompson, Ken. A New C Compiler (PDF).
Murray Hill, New Jersey: AT&T Bell Laboratories.
Feuer, Alan R. (1998). The C Puzzle Book (1st, revised printing ed.). Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0201-60461-0.

ISO C Working Group ocial website

comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions
ISO/IEC 9899, publicly available ocial C documents, including the C99 Rationale
C99 with Technical corrigenda TC1, TC2, and TC3
included PDF (3.61 MB)
A History of C, by Dennis Richie

13

17
17.1

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