Chapter 1 – Overview of C
History of C:
✓ The C programming language was designed by Dennis
Ritchie at Bell Laboratories in the early 1970s
✓Structured, High-level, machine-independent language
✓Root from ALGOL ( Algorithmic Language ) – First
computer language – Using block structure
✓Influenced by
✓ALGOL 60 (1960),
✓CPL - Combined Programming Language (Cambridge,
1963),
✓BCPL – Basic Combined Programming Language (Martin
Richard, 1967),
✓B – Features of BCPL – To create UINX (Ken Thompson,
1970)
✓C was evolved from ALGOL, BCPL and B.
✓Finally C released on 1972
Traditional C
In 1978 – More popular after publication of the book
“The C Programming Language” by Brian Kerningham
and Dennis Ritchie
Referred as “K&R C”
❖Standardized in 1989 by ANSI (American National
Standards Institute) known as ANSI C
❖International Standard Organisation (ISO) in 1990
which was adopted by ANSI and is known as C89
❖As part of the normal evolution process the standard
was updated in 1995 (C95) and 1999 (C99)
❖C++ and C
❖C++ (1990) extends C to include support for Object
Oriented Programming and other features that facilitate large
software development projects
❖C is not strictly a subset of C++, but it is possible to write
“Clean C” that conforms to both the C++ and C standards.
History of C
1960 ALGOL International Group
1967 BCPL Martin Richards
1970 B Ken Thompson
1972 Traditional C Dennis Ritchie
History of C
1978 K&R C Kernighan and Ritchie
1989 ANSI C ANSI Committee
1990 ANSI/ISO C ISO Committee
Importance of C
Efficient and fast – due to its data types and operators
32 keywords
Highly portable
Well structured programming
Ability to extend itself – we can add our own functions to
C library
Basic Structure of C Programs
Documentation Section
Link Section
Definition Section
Global Declaration Section
main () Function Section
{
Declaration part
Executable part
}
Subprogram section
Function 1
Function 2
-
- ( User-defined functions )
Function n
All sections, except the main function section may be absent when they are not required
Documentation section:
Consists of a set of comment lines like name of the
program, the author
Link section:
Provides instructions to the compiler to link functions from
the system library
Definition section:
Defines all symbolic constants
Global Declaration section:
Global variable are declared in global declaration section
i.e. outside of all the functions also declares all the user-
defined functions
Cont…
Every C program must have one main() function
It contains two parts
Declaration part
Executable part
Declaration part:
Declares all the variables used in the executable part
Executable part:
At least one statement in this part
These two parts must appear between opening and closing
braces ({ } )
The program execution begins at the opening brace and ends
at the closing braces
The closing brace of the main function is the logical end of
the program
Cont…
Subprogram section:
Contains all the user-defined functions
The functions are called in the main function
Example Program:
/* Name: xxxxx */ Documentation Section
/*Program showing only printf statement*/
#include <stdio.h>
Link Section
#include <conio.h>
#define PI=3.14 Definition Section
int a=10;
void sum(); Global variable declaration Section
main()
Control Starts from here
{
Opening Brace
int count = 1;
Declaration part
printf(“ The pie value is = %f”, PI);
printf(“The value of a is = %d”,a); Executable part
sum();
}
Closing Brace
void sum() Subprogram Section
{ printf(“The value of a is=%d”,a);
Programming Style
Writing program in lowercase letters
C is a free form language, we can group statements
together on one line.
a=b;
x=y+1;
z=a+x;
Can be written in one line as
a=b; x=y+1; z=a+x;
Executing a ‘C’ program
Creating the program
Compiling the program
Linking the program
Executing the program
