01/03/2025, 15:54 C (programming language) - Wikipedia

C (programming language)
C (pronounced /ˈsiː/ – like the letter c)[6] is a general-
C
purpose programming language. It was created in the
1970s by Dennis Ritchie and remains very widely used
and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the
capabilities of the targeted CPUs. It has found lasting use
in operating systems code (especially in kernels[7]),
device drivers, and protocol stacks, but its use in
application software has been decreasing.[8] C is
commonly used on computer architectures that range from Logotype used on the cover of the first edition
the largest supercomputers to the smallest of The C Programming Language[1]
microcontrollers and embedded systems. Paradigm Multi-paradigm: imperative
(procedural), structured
A successor to the programming language B, C was
Designed by Dennis Ritchie
originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie between
1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It Developer ANSI X3J11 (ANSI C);
was applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint
operating system.[9] During the 1980s, C gradually gained Technical Committee 1) /
popularity. It has become one of the most widely used SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) /
WG 14 (Working Group 14)
programming languages,[10][11] with C compilers
available for practically all modern computer architectures (ISO C)
and operating systems. The book The C Programming First appeared 1972[2]
Language, co-authored by the original language designer, Stable release C23 / October 31, 2024
served for many years as the de facto standard for the
Preview release C2y (N3220) / February 21,
language.[12][1] C has been standardized since 1989 by the
2024[3]
American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and,
subsequently, jointly by the International Organization for Typing Static, weak, manifest,
Standardization (ISO) and the International discipline nominal
Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). OS Cross-platform
Filename .c, .h
C is an imperative procedural language, supporting
extensions
structured programming, lexical variable scope, and
recursion, with a static type system. It was designed to be Website www.iso.org/standard
compiled to provide low-level access to memory and /82075.html (https://www.is
language constructs that map efficiently to machine o.org/standard/82075.html)
www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22
instructions, all with minimal runtime support. Despite its
/wg14/ (http://www.open-st
low-level capabilities, the language was designed to
d.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/)
encourage cross-platform programming. A standards-
compliant C program written with portability in mind can Major implementations
be compiled for a wide variety of computer platforms and pcc, GCC, Clang, Intel C, C++Builder,
operating systems with few changes to its source code. Microsoft Visual C++, Watcom C
Dialects

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Since 2000, C has consistently ranked among the top four Cyclone, Unified Parallel C, Split-C, Cilk, C*
languages in the TIOBE index, a measure of the Influenced by
popularity of programming languages.[13]
B (BCPL, CPL), ALGOL 68,[4] PL/I, FORTRAN
Influenced

Overview Numerous: AMPL, AWK, csh, C++, C--, C#,

Objective-C, D, Go, Java, JavaScript, JS++,
C is an imperative, procedural language in the ALGOL Julia, Limbo, LPC, Perl, PHP, Pike,
tradition. It has a static type system. In C, all executable Processing, Python, Rust, Seed7, V (Vlang),
code is contained within subroutines (also called Vala, Verilog (HDL),[5] Nim, Zig
"functions", though not in the sense of functional C Programming at Wikibooks
programming). Function parameters are passed by value,
although arrays are passed as pointers, i.e. the address of
the first item in the array. Pass-by-reference is simulated in C by
explicitly passing pointers to the thing being referenced.

C program source text is free-form code. Semicolons terminate

statements, while curly braces are used to group statements into
blocks.

The C language also exhibits the following characteristics: Dennis Ritchie (right), the inventor
of the C programming language,
The language has a small, fixed number of keywords, with Ken Thompson
including a full set of control flow primitives: if/else, for,
do/while, while, and switch. User-defined names are
not distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil.
It has a large number of arithmetic, bitwise, and logic operators: +,+=,++,&,||, etc.
More than one assignment may be performed in a single statement.
Functions:
Function return values can be ignored, when not needed.
Function and data pointers permit ad hoc run-time polymorphism.
Functions may not be defined within the lexical scope of other functions.
Variables may be defined within a function, with scope.
A function may call itself, so recursion is supported.
Data typing is static, but weakly enforced; all data has a type, but implicit conversions are
possible.
User-defined (typedef) and compound types are possible.
Heterogeneous aggregate data types (struct) allow related data elements to be
accessed and assigned as a unit. The contents of whole structs cannot be compared using
a single built-in operator (the elements must be compared individually).
Union is a structure with overlapping members; it allows multiple data types to share the
same memory location.
Array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Whole arrays
cannot be assigned or compared using a single built-in operator. There is no "array"
keyword in use or definition; instead, square brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for
example month[11].
Enumerated types are possible with the enum keyword. They are freely interconvertible
with integers.
Strings are not a distinct data type, but are conventionally implemented as null-terminated
character arrays.
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Low-level access to computer memory is possible by converting machine addresses to

pointers.
Procedures (subroutines not returning values) are a special case of function, with an empty
return type void.
Memory can be allocated to a program with calls to library routines.
A preprocessor performs macro definition, source code file inclusion, and conditional
compilation.
There is a basic form of modularity: files can be compiled separately and linked together, with
control over which functions and data objects are visible to other files via static and extern
attributes.
Complex functionality such as I/O, string manipulation, and mathematical functions are
consistently delegated to library routines.
The generated code after compilation has relatively straightforward needs on the underlying
platform, which makes it suitable for creating operating systems and for use in embedded
systems.
While C does not include certain features found in other languages (such as object orientation and garbage
collection), these can be implemented or emulated, often through the use of external libraries (e.g., the GLib
Object System or the Boehm garbage collector).

Relations to other languages

Many later languages have borrowed directly or indirectly from C, including C++, C#, Unix's C shell, D,
Go, Java, JavaScript (including transpilers), Julia, Limbo, LPC, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust,
Swift, Verilog and SystemVerilog (hardware description languages).[5] These languages have drawn many of
their control structures and other basic features from C. Most of them also express highly similar syntax to
C, 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 different.

History

Early developments
The origin of C is closely tied to the development of the Unix Timeline of C language
operating system, originally implemented in assembly Year
Informal Official
language on a PDP-7 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, name standard

incorporating several ideas from colleagues. Eventually, they 1972 first release —
decided to port the operating system to a PDP-11. The 1978 K&R C —
original PDP-11 version of Unix was also developed in
1989, ANSI C, C89, ANSI X3.159-1989
assembly language.[9] 1990 ISO C, C90 ISO/IEC 9899:1990
1999 C99, C9X ISO/IEC 9899:1999
B 2011 C11, C1X ISO/IEC 9899:2011
Thompson wanted a programming language for developing 2018 C17, C18 ISO/IEC 9899:2018
utilities for the new platform. He first tried writing a Fortran
2024 C23, C2X ISO/IEC 9899:2024
compiler, but he soon gave up the idea and instead created a
cut-down version of the recently developed systems TBA C2Y
programming language called BCPL. The official description
of BCPL was not available at the time,[14] and Thompson modified the syntax to be less 'wordy' and similar

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to a simplified ALGOL known as SMALGOL.[15] He called the result B,[9] describing it as "BCPL
semantics with a lot of SMALGOL syntax".[15] Like BCPL, B had a bootstrapping compiler to facilitate
porting to new machines.[15] Ultimately, few utilities were written in B because it was too slow and could
not take advantage of PDP-11 features such as byte addressability.

New B and first C release

In 1971 Ritchie started to improve B, to use the features of the more-powerful PDP-11. A significant
addition was a character data type. He called this New B (NB).[15] Thompson started to use NB to write the
Unix kernel, and his requirements shaped the direction of the language development.[15][16] Through to
1972, richer types were added to the NB language: NB had arrays of int and char. Pointers, the ability to
generate pointers to other types, arrays of all types, and types to be returned from functions were all also
added. Arrays within expressions became pointers. A new compiler was written, and the language was
renamed C.[9]

The C compiler and some utilities made with it were included in Version 2 Unix, which is also known as
Research Unix.[17]

Structures and Unix kernel re-write

At Version 4 Unix, released in November 1973, the Unix kernel was extensively re-implemented in C.[9] By
this time, the C language had acquired some powerful features such as struct types.

The preprocessor was introduced around 1973 at the urging of Alan Snyder and also in recognition of the
usefulness of the file-inclusion mechanisms available in BCPL and PL/I. Its original version provided only
included files and simple string replacements: #include and #define of parameterless macros. Soon
after that, it was extended, mostly by Mike Lesk and then by John Reiser, to incorporate macros with
arguments and conditional compilation.[9]

Unix was one of the first operating system kernels implemented in a language other than assembly. Earlier
instances include the Multics system (which was written in PL/I) and Master Control Program (MCP) for the
Burroughs B5000 (which was written in ALGOL) in 1961. In around 1977, Ritchie and Stephen C. Johnson
made further changes to the language to facilitate portability of the Unix operating system. Johnson's
Portable C Compiler served as the basis for several implementations of C on new platforms.[16]

K&R C
In 1978 Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of The C Programming
Language.[18] Known as K&R from the initials of its authors, the book 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". As
this was released in 1978, it is now also referred to as C78.[19] The second edition of the book[20] covers the
later ANSI C standard, described below.

K&R introduced several language features:

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=
(that is, -=) to remove the semantic ambiguity created by constructs such as i=-10, which

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had been interpreted as i =- 10 (decrement i by 10) instead of

the possibly intended i = -10 (let i be −10).
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.

In early versions of C, only functions that return types other than int must
be declared if used before the function definition; functions used without
prior declaration were presumed to return type int.

For example: The cover of the book The

C Programming Language,
long some_function(); /* This is a function declaration, so the compiler first edition, by Brian
can know the name and return type of this function. */ Kernighan and Dennis
/* int */ other_function(); /* Another function declaration. Because
this is an early version of C, there is an implicit 'int' type here. A Ritchie
comment shows where the explicit 'int' type specifier would be required
in later versions. */

/* int */ calling_function() /* This is a function definition, including

the body of the code following in the { curly brackets }. Because no
return type is specified, the function implicitly returns an 'int' in
this early version of C. */
{
long test1;
register /* int */ test2; /* Again, note that 'int' is not required
here. The 'int' type specifier */
/* in the comment would be required in
later versions of C. */
/* The 'register' keyword indicates to the
compiler that this variable should */
/* ideally be stored in a register as
opposed to within the stack frame. */
test1 = some_function();
if (test1 > 1)
test2 = 0;
else
test2 = other_function();
return test2;
}

The int type specifiers 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 different calls to an external function
used different numbers or types 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 features were added to the language, supported by
compilers from AT&T (in particular PCC[21]) and some other vendors. These included:

void functions (i.e., functions with no return value)

functions returning struct or union types (previously only a single pointer, integer or float
could be returned)
assignment for struct data types

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enumerated types (previously, preprocessor definitions for integer fixed values were used, e.g.
#define GREEN 3)
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 specification, led to
the necessity of standardization.[22]

ANSI C and ISO 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
significantly.

In 1983 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formed a committee, X3J11, to establish a
standard specification of C. X3J11 based the C standard on the Unix implementation; however, the non-
portable portion of the Unix C library was handed off to the IEEE working group 1003 to become the basis
for the 1988 POSIX standard. In 1989, the C 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 formatting changes) was adopted by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 9899:1990, which is sometimes called C90. Therefore, the terms "C89"
and "C90" refer to the same programming language.

ANSI, like other national standards bodies, no longer develops the C standard independently, but defers to
the international C standard, maintained by the working group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14. National
adoption of an update to the international standard typically occurs within a year of ISO publication.

One of the aims of the C standardization process was to produce a superset of K&R C, incorporating many
of the subsequently introduced unofficial 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 modern C code 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 to prevent the use on a
K&R C-based compiler of features available only in Standard C.

After the ANSI/ISO standardization process, the C language specification 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.[23]

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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.[24]

C99 introduced several new features, including inline functions, several new data types (including long
long int and a complex type to represent complex numbers), variable-length arrays and flexible array
members, improved support for IEEE 754 floating point, support for variadic macros (macros of variable
arity), and support for one-line comments beginning with //, as in BCPL or C++. Many of these had
already been implemented as extensions in several C compilers.

C99 is for the most part backward compatible with C90, but is stricter in some ways; in particular, a
declaration that lacks a type specifier no longer has int implicitly assumed. A standard macro
__STDC_VERSION__ is defined 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.[25]

In addition, the C99 standard requires support for identifiers using Unicode in the form of escaped characters
(e.g. \u0040 or \U0001f431) and suggests support for raw Unicode names.

C11
Work began in 2007 on another revision of the C standard, informally called "C1X" until its official
publication of ISO/IEC 9899:2011 on December 8, 2011. 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 library optional, and improves compatibility with
C++. The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as 201112L to indicate that C11 support is
available.

C17
C17 is an informal name for ISO/IEC 9899:2018, a standard for the C programming language published in
June 2018. It introduces no new language features, only technical corrections, and clarifications to defects in
C11. The standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as 201710L to indicate that C17 support is
available.

C23
C23 is an informal name for the current major C language standard revision. It was informally known as
"C2X" through most of its development. C23 was published in October 2024 as ISO/IEC 9899:2024.[26] The
standard macro __STDC_VERSION__ is defined as 202311L to indicate that C23 support is available.

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C2Y
C2Y is an informal name for the next major C language standard revision, after C23 (C2X), that is hoped to
be released later in the 2020s decade, hence the '2' in "C2Y". An early working draft of C2Y was released in
February 2024 as N3220 by the working group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14.[27]

Embedded C
Historically, embedded C programming requires non-standard extensions to the C language to support exotic
features such as fixed-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[28] 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 fixed-point arithmetic, named address spaces, and basic I/O
hardware addressing.

Syntax
C has a formal grammar specified by the C standard.[29] Line endings are generally not significant in C;
however, line boundaries do have significance during the preprocessing phase. Comments may appear either
between the delimiters /* and */, or (since C99) following // until the end of the line. Comments
delimited by /* and */ do not nest, and these sequences of characters are not interpreted as comment
delimiters if they appear inside string or character literals.[30]

C source files contain 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 specify built-in types. Sections of code are
enclosed in braces ({ and }, sometimes called "curly brackets") to limit the scope of declarations and to act
as a single statement for control structures.

As an imperative language, C uses statements to specify actions. The most common statement is an
expression statement, consisting of an expression to be evaluated, followed by a semicolon; as a side effect
of the evaluation, functions may be called and variables assigned new values. To modify the normal
sequential execution of statements, C provides several control-flow statements identified by reserved
keywords. Structured programming is supported by if ... [else] conditional execution and by do ...
while, while, and for iterative execution (looping). The for statement has separate initialization,
testing, and reinitialization expressions, any or all of which can be omitted. break and continue can be
used within the loop. Break is used to leave the innermost enclosing loop statement and continue is used to
skip to its reinitialisation. 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. Different from many other languages, control-flow will fall through to the next case
unless terminated by a break.

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 unspecified. The evaluations may
even be interleaved. However, all side effects (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

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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 its blemishes. Some of the operators have the wrong precedence; some parts of the syntax
could be better."[31] The C standard did not attempt to correct many of these blemishes, because of the
impact of such changes on already existing software.

Character set
The basic C source character set includes the following characters:

Lowercase and uppercase letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet: a–z, A–Z
Decimal digits: 0–9
Graphic characters: ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? [ \ ] ^ _ { |
} ~
Whitespace characters: space, horizontal tab, vertical tab, form feed, newline
The newline character indicates the end of a text line; it need not correspond to an actual single character,
although for convenience C treats it as such.

Additional multi-byte encoded characters may be used in string literals, but they are not entirely portable.
The latest C standard (C11) allows multi-national Unicode characters to be embedded portably within C
source text by using \uXXXX or \UXXXXXXXX encoding (where X denotes a hexadecimal character),
although this feature is not yet widely implemented.

The basic C execution character set contains the 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.

Reserved words
The following reserved words are case sensitive.

C89 has 32 reserved words, also known as 'keywords', which cannot be used for any purposes other than
those for which they are predefined:

auto extern sizeof

break float static
case for struct
char goto switch
const if typedef
continue int union
default long unsigned
do register void
double return volatile
else short while
enum signed
C99 added five more reserved words: (‡ indicates an alternative spelling alias for a C23 keyword)
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inline _Bool ‡ _Imaginary

restrict _Complex
C11 added seven more reserved words:[32] (‡ indicates an alternative spelling alias for a C23 keyword)

_Alignas ‡ _Generic _Thread_local ‡

_Alignof ‡ _Noreturn
_Atomic _Static_assert ‡
C23 reserved fifteen more words:

alignas nullptr typeof_unqual

alignof static_assert _BitInt
bool thread_local _Decimal32
constexpr true _Decimal64
false typeof _Decimal128
Most of the recently reserved words begin with an underscore followed by a capital letter, because identifiers
of that form were previously reserved by the C standard for use only by implementations. Since existing
program source code should not have been using these identifiers, it would not be affected when C
implementations started supporting these extensions to the programming language. Some standard headers
do define more convenient synonyms for underscored identifiers. Some of those words were added as
keywords with their conventional spelling in C23 and the corresponding macros were removed.

Prior to C89, entry was reserved as a keyword. In the second edition of their book The C Programming
Language, which describes what became known as C89, Kernighan and Ritchie wrote, "The ... [keyword]
entry, formerly reserved but never used, is no longer reserved." and "The stillborn entry keyword is
withdrawn."[33]

Operators
C supports a rich set of operators, which are symbols used within an expression to specify the manipulations
to be performed while evaluating that expression. C has operators for:

arithmetic: +, -, *, /, %
assignment: =
augmented assignment: +=, -=, *=, /=, %=, &=, |=, ^=, <<=, >>=
bitwise logic: ~, &, |, ^
bitwise shifts: <<, >>
Boolean logic: !, &&, ||
conditional evaluation: ? :
equality testing: ==, !=
calling functions: ( )
increment and decrement: ++, --
member selection: ., ->
object size: sizeof
type: typeof, typeof_unqual since C23
order relations: <, <=, >, >=
reference and dereference: &, *, [ ]
sequencing: ,
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subexpression grouping: ( )
type conversion: (typename)
C uses the operator = (used in mathematics to express equality) to indicate assignment, following the
precedent of Fortran and PL/I, but unlike ALGOL and its derivatives. C uses the operator == to test for
equality. The similarity between the operators for assignment and equality may result in the accidental use of
one in place of the other, and in many cases the mistake does not produce an error message (although some
compilers produce warnings). For example, the conditional expression if (a == b + 1) might
mistakenly be written as if (a = b + 1), which will be evaluated as true unless the value of a is 0
after the assignment.[34]

The C operator precedence is not always intuitive. For example, the operator == binds more tightly than (is
executed prior to) the operators & (bitwise AND) and | (bitwise OR) in expressions such as x & 1 == 0,
which must be written as (x & 1) == 0 if that is the coder's intent.[35]

"Hello, world" example

The "hello, world" example that appeared in the first edition of K&R
has become the model for an introductory program in most
programming textbooks. The program prints "hello, world" to the
standard output, which is usually a terminal or screen display.

The original version was:[36]

main()
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}

A standard-conforming "hello, world" program is:[a]

"Hello, World!" program by Brian
#include <stdio.h> Kernighan (1978)

int main(void)
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}

The first line of the program contains a preprocessing directive, indicated by #include. This causes the
compiler to replace that line of code with the entire text of the stdio.h header file, which contains
declarations for standard input and output functions such as printf and scanf. The angle brackets
surrounding stdio.h indicate that the header file can be located using a search strategy that prefers
headers provided with the compiler to other headers having the same name (as opposed to double quotes
which typically include local or project-specific header files).

The second line indicates that a function named main is being defined. The main function serves a special
purpose in C programs; the run-time environment calls the main function to begin program execution. The
type specifier int indicates that the value 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 as a parameter list indicates that
the main function takes no arguments.[b]

The opening curly brace indicates the beginning of the code that defines the main function.
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The next line of the program is a statement that calls (i.e. diverts execution to) a function named printf,
which in this case is supplied from a system library. In this call, the printf function is passed (i.e.
provided with) a single argument, which is the address of the first character in the string literal "hello,
world\n". The string literal is an unnamed array set up automatically by the compiler, with elements of
type char and a final NULL character (ASCII value 0) marking the end of the array (to allow printf to
determine the length of the string). The NULL character can also be written as the escape sequence \0. The
\n is a standard escape sequence that C translates to a newline character, which, on output, signifies 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 check that 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
specification and newer, the main function (unlike any other function) will implicitly return a value of 0
upon reaching the } that terminates the function.[c] The return value of 0 is interpreted by the run-time
system as an exit code indicating successful execution of the function.[37]

Data types
The type system in C is static and weakly typed, which makes it
similar to the type system of ALGOL descendants such as Pascal.[38]
There are built-in types for integers of various sizes, both signed and
unsigned, floating-point numbers, and enumerated types (enum).
Integer type char is often used for single-byte characters. C99 added
a Boolean data type. There are also derived types including arrays,
pointers, records (struct), and 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 data object in
some other way.

Some find C's declaration syntax unintuitive, particularly for function

pointers. (Ritchie's idea was to declare identifiers in contexts resembling their use: "declaration reflects
use".)[39]

C's usual arithmetic conversions allow for efficient code to be generated, but can sometimes produce
unexpected results. For example, a comparison of signed and unsigned integers of equal width requires a
conversion of the signed value to unsigned. This can generate unexpected results if the signed value is
negative.

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 offset-within-
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word field), 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.

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; the result of a malloc is usually
cast to the data type of the data to be stored. Many data types, such as trees, are commonly implemented as
dynamically allocated struct objects linked together using pointers. Pointers to other pointers are often
used in multi-dimensional arrays and arrays of struct objects. Pointers to functions (function pointers) are
useful for passing functions as arguments to higher-order functions (such as qsort or bsearch), in dispatch
tables, or as callbacks to event handlers.[37]

A null pointer value explicitly points to no valid location. Dereferencing a null pointer value is undefined,
often resulting in a segmentation fault. Null pointer values 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. 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, as the NULL macro defined by several
standard headers or, since C23 with the constant nullptr. In conditional contexts, null pointer values
evaluate to false, while all other pointer values evaluate to true.

Void pointers (void *) point to objects of unspecified 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 allowed, although they can easily be (and in many contexts implicitly are)
converted to and from any other object pointer type.[37]

Careless use of pointers is potentially dangerous. Because they are typically unchecked, a pointer variable
can be made to point to any arbitrary location, which can cause undesirable effects. Although properly used
pointers point to safe places, they can be made to point to unsafe places by using invalid pointer arithmetic;
the objects they point to may continue to be used after deallocation (dangling pointers); they may be used
without having been initialized (wild pointers); or they may be directly assigned an unsafe value using a
cast, union, or through another 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.

Arrays
Array types in C are 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.

Since arrays are always accessed (in effect) via pointers, array accesses are typically not checked against the
underlying array size, although some compilers may provide bounds checking as an option.[40][41] Array
bounds violations are therefore possible and can lead to various repercussions, including illegal memory
accesses, corruption of data, buffer overruns, and run-time exceptions.

C does not have a special provision for declaring multi-dimensional 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 "multi-dimensional array" can be thought of as increasing in row-major order. Multi-
dimensional arrays are commonly used in numerical algorithms (mainly from applied linear algebra) to store

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matrices. The structure of the C array is well suited to this particular task. However, in early versions of C
the bounds of the array must be known fixed values or else explicitly passed to any subroutine that requires
them, and dynamically sized arrays of arrays cannot be accessed using double indexing. (A workaround for
this was to allocate the array with an additional "row vector" of pointers to the columns.) C99 introduced
"variable-length arrays" which address this issue.

The following example using modern C (C99 or later) shows allocation of a two-dimensional array on the
heap and the use of multi-dimensional array indexing for accesses (which can use bounds-checking on many
C compilers):

int func(int N, int M)

{
float (*p)[N] [M] = malloc(sizeof *p);
if (p == 0)
return -1;
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
(*p)[i] [j] = i + j;
print_array(N, M, p);
free(p);
return 1;
}

And here is a similar implementation using C99's Auto VLA feature:[d]

int func(int N, int M)

{
// Caution: checks should be made to ensure N*M*sizeof(float) does NOT exceed limitations for auto VLAs
and is within available size of stack.
float p[N] [M]; // auto VLA is held on the stack, and sized when the function is invoked
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
p[i] [j] = i + j;
print_array(N, M, p);
// no need to free(p) since it will disappear when the function exits, along with the rest of the stack
frame
return 1;
}

Array–pointer interchangeability
The subscript notation x[i] (where x designates a pointer) is syntactic sugar for *(x+i).[42] Taking
advantage of the compiler's knowledge of the pointer type, the address that x + i points to is not the base
address (pointed to by x) incremented by i bytes, but rather is defined to be the 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), an expression of

array type 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 function calls in C use pass-by-value semantics, arrays are in effect
passed by reference.

The total size of an array x can be determined by applying sizeof to an expression of array type. The size
of an element can be determined by applying the operator sizeof to any dereferenced element of an array
A, as in n = sizeof A[0]. Thus, the number of elements in a declared array A can be determined as

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sizeof A / sizeof A[0]. Note, that if only a pointer to the first element is available as it is often the
case in C code because of the automatic conversion described above, the information about the full type of
the array and its length are lost.

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 principal ways to allocate memory for
objects:[37]

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
persist until subsequently freed for reuse by calling the library function realloc or free.
These three approaches are appropriate in different situations and have various trade-offs. 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.

Where possible, automatic or static allocation is usually simplest because the storage is managed by the
compiler, freeing the programmer of the potentially error-prone chore of manually allocating and releasing
storage. However, many data structures can change in size at runtime, and since static allocations (and
automatic allocations before C99) must have a fixed size at compile-time, there are many situations in which
dynamic allocation is necessary.[37] Prior to the C99 standard, variable-sized arrays were a common example
of this. (See the article on C dynamic memory allocation for an example of dynamically allocated arrays.)
Unlike automatic allocation, which can fail at run time with uncontrolled consequences, the dynamic
allocation functions return an indication (in the form of a null pointer value) when the required storage
cannot be allocated. (Static allocation that is too large is usually detected by the linker or loader, before the
program can even begin execution.)

Unless otherwise specified, 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 specified;
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 undefined. Many modern compilers try to detect and warn about this
problem, but both false positives and false negatives can occur.

Heap memory allocation has to be synchronized with its actual usage in any program 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 it is deallocated explicitly, then that memory cannot be recovered for later reuse and is
essentially lost to the program, a phenomenon known as a memory leak. Conversely, it is possible for

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memory to be freed, but is referenced subsequently, leading to unpredictable results. Typically, the failure
symptoms appear in a portion of the program unrelated to the code that causes the error, making it difficult
to diagnose the failure. Such issues are ameliorated in languages with automatic garbage collection.

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" 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. For a program to use a library, it must
include the library's header file, and the library must be linked with the program, which in many cases
requires compiler flags (e.g., -lm, shorthand for "link the math library").[37]

The most common C library is the C standard library, which is specified by the ISO and ANSI C standards
and comes with every C implementation (implementations which target limited environments such as
embedded systems may provide only a subset of the standard library). This library supports stream input and
output, memory allocation, mathematics, character strings, and time values. Several separate standard
headers (for example, stdio.h) specify the interfaces for these and other standard library facilities.

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.[37]

File handling and streams

File input and output (I/O) is not part of the C language itself but instead is handled by libraries (such as the
C standard library) and their associated header files (e.g. stdio.h). File handling is generally implemented
through high-level I/O which works through streams. A stream is from this perspective a data flow that is
independent of devices, while a file is a concrete device. The high-level I/O is done through the association
of a stream to a file. In the C standard library, a buffer (a memory area or queue) is temporarily used to store
data before it is sent to the final destination. This reduces the time spent waiting for slower devices, for
example a hard drive or solid-state drive. Low-level I/O functions are not part of the standard C library but
are generally part of "bare metal" programming (programming that is independent of any operating system
such as most embedded programming). With few exceptions, implementations include low-level I/O.

Language tools
A number of tools have been developed to help C programmers find and fix statements with undefined
behavior or possibly erroneous expressions, with greater rigor than that provided by the compiler.

Automated source code checking and auditing 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. Also, many compilers can optionally warn about syntactically valid constructs that are
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likely to actually be errors. MISRA C is a proprietary set of guidelines to avoid such questionable code,
developed for embedded systems.[43]

There are also compilers, libraries, and operating system level mechanisms for performing actions that are
not a standard part of C, such as bounds checking for arrays, detection of buffer overflow, serialization,
dynamic memory tracking, and automatic garbage collection.

Memory management checking tools like Purify or Valgrind and linking with libraries containing special
versions of the memory allocation functions can help uncover runtime errors in memory usage.[44][45]

Uses

Rationale for use in systems programming

C is widely used for systems programming in implementing operating
systems and embedded system applications.[46] This is for several
reasons:

The C language permits platform hardware and memory to

be accessed with pointers and type punning, so system-
specific features (e.g. Control/Status Registers, I/O
registers) can be configured and used with code written in
C – it allows fullest control of the platform it is running on.
Some software written in C
The code generated after compilation does not demand
many system features, and can be invoked from some boot
code in a straightforward manner – it is simple to execute.
The C language statements and expressions typically map well on to sequences of instructions
for the target processor, and consequently there is a low run-time demand on system
resources – it is fast to execute.
With its rich set of operators, the C language can use many of the features of target CPUs.
Where a particular CPU has more esoteric instructions, a language variant can be constructed
with perhaps intrinsic functions to exploit those instructions – it can use practically all the target
CPU's features.
The language makes it easy to overlay structures onto blocks of binary data, allowing the data
to be comprehended, navigated and modified – it can write data structures, even file systems.
The language supports a rich set of operators, including bit manipulation, for integer arithmetic
and logic, and perhaps different sizes of floating point numbers – it can process appropriately-
structured data effectively.
C is a fairly small language, with only a handful of statements, and without too many features
that generate extensive target code – it is comprehensible.
C has direct control over memory allocation and deallocation, which gives reasonable
efficiency and predictable timing to memory-handling operations, without any concerns for
sporadic stop-the-world garbage collection events – it has predictable performance.
C permits the use and implementation of different memory allocation schemes, including a
typical malloc and free; a more sophisticated mechanism with arenas; or a version for an
OS kernel that may suit DMA, use within interrupt handlers, or integrated with the virtual
memory system.
Depending on the linker and environment, C code can also call libraries written in assembly
language, and may be called from assembly language – it interoperates well with other lower-
level code.

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C and its calling conventions and linker structures are commonly used in conjunction with other
high-level languages, with calls both to C and from C supported – it interoperates well with
other high-level code.
C has a very mature and broad ecosystem, including libraries, frameworks, open source
compilers, debuggers and utilities, and is the de facto standard. It is likely the drivers already
exist in C, or that there is a similar CPU architecture as a back-end of a C compiler, so there is
reduced incentive to choose another language.

Used for computationally-intensive libraries

C enables programmers to create efficient implementations of algorithms and data structures, because the
layer of abstraction from hardware is thin, and its overhead is low, an important criterion for computationally
intensive programs. For example, the GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library, the GNU Scientific
Library, Mathematica, and MATLAB are completely or partially written in C. Many languages support
calling library functions in C, for example, the Python-based framework NumPy uses C for the high-
performance and hardware-interacting aspects.

C as an intermediate language
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, additional machine-specific
code generators are not necessary. C has some features, such as line-number preprocessor directives and
optional superfluous commas at the end of initializer lists, that support compilation of generated code.
However, some of C's shortcomings have prompted the development of other C-based languages specifically
designed for use as intermediate languages, such as C--. Also, contemporary major compilers GCC and
LLVM both feature an intermediate representation that is not C, and those compilers support front ends for
many languages including C.

Other languages written in C

A consequence of C's wide availability and efficiency is that compilers, libraries and interpreters of other
programming languages are often implemented in C.[47] For example, the reference implementations of
Python,[48] Perl,[49] Ruby,[50] and PHP[51] are written in C.

Once used for web development

Historically, C was sometimes used for web development using the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) as a
"gateway" for information between the web application, the server, and the browser.[52] C may have been
chosen over interpreted languages because of its speed, stability, and near-universal availability.[53] It is no
longer common practice for web development to be done in C,[54] and many other web development
languages are popular. Applications where C-based web development continues include the HTTP
configuration pages on routers, IoT devices and similar, although even here some projects have parts in
higher-level languages e.g. the use of Lua within OpenWRT.

Web servers
The two most popular web servers, Apache HTTP Server and Nginx, are both written in C. These web
servers interact with the operating system, listen on TCP ports for HTTP requests, and then serve up static
web content, or cause the execution of other languages handling to 'render' content such as PHP, which is

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itself primarily written in C. C's close-to-the-metal approach allows for the construction of these high-
performance software systems.

End-user applications
C has also been widely used to implement end-user applications.[55] However, such applications can also be
written in newer, higher-level languages.

Limitations

the power of assembly language and the convenience of ... assembly language

— Dennis Ritchie[56]

While C has been popular, influential and hugely successful, it has drawbacks, including:

The standard dynamic memory handling with malloc and free is error prone. Improper use
can lead to memory leaks and dangling pointers.
The use of pointers and the direct manipulation of memory means corruption of memory is
possible, perhaps due to programmer error, or insufficient checking of bad data.
There is some type checking, but it does not apply to areas like variadic functions, and the type
checking can be trivially or inadvertently circumvented. It is weakly typed.
Since the code generated by the compiler contains few checks itself, there is a burden on the
programmer to consider all possible outcomes, to protect against buffer overruns, array bounds
checking, stack overflows, memory exhaustion, and consider race conditions, thread isolation,
etc.
The use of pointers and the run-time manipulation of these means there may be two ways to
access the same data (aliasing), which is not determinable at compile time. This means that
some optimisations that may be available to other languages are not possible in C. FORTRAN
is considered faster.
Some of the standard library functions, e.g. scanf or strncat, can lead to buffer overruns.
There is limited standardisation in support for low-level variants in generated code, for
example: different function calling conventions and ABI; different structure packing
conventions; different byte ordering within larger integers (including endianness). In many
language implementations, some of these options may be handled with the preprocessor
directive #pragma,[57][58] and some with additional keywords e.g. use __cdecl calling
convention. The directive and options are not consistently supported.[59]
String handling using the standard library is code-intensive, with explicit memory management
required.
The language does not directly support object orientation, introspection, run-time expression
evaluation, generics, etc.
There are few guards against inappropriate use of language features, which may lead to
unmaintainable code. In particular, the C preprocessor can hide troubling effects such as
double evaluation and worse.[60] This facility for tricky code has been celebrated with
competitions such as the International Obfuscated C Code Contest and the Underhanded C
Contest.
C lacks standard support for exception handling and only offers return codes for error
checking. The setjmp and longjmp standard library functions have been used[61] to
implement a try-catch mechanism via macros.

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For some purposes, restricted styles of C have been adopted, e.g. MISRA C or CERT C, in an attempt to
reduce the opportunity for bugs. Databases such as CWE attempt to count the ways C etc. has
vulnerabilities, along with recommendations for mitigation.

There are tools that can mitigate against some of the drawbacks. Contemporary C compilers include checks
which may generate warnings to help identify many potential bugs.

Related languages
C has both directly and indirectly influenced many later languages
such as C++ and Java.[63] The most pervasive influence 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 or large-scale program structures that differ from those
of C, sometimes radically. The TIOBE index graph, showing a
comparison of the popularity of
Several C or near-C interpreters exist, including Ch and CINT, which various programming languages[62]
can also be used for scripting.

When object-oriented programming languages became popular, C++ and Objective-C were two different
extensions of C that provided object-oriented capabilities. Both languages were originally implemented as
source-to-source compilers; source code was translated into C, and then compiled with a C compiler.[64]

The C++ programming language (originally named "C with Classes") was devised by Bjarne Stroustrup as
an approach to providing object-oriented functionality with a C-like syntax.[65] 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 exceptions.

Objective-C was originally a very "thin" layer on top of C, and remains 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 was originally taken from
Smalltalk.

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

See also
Computer
programming portal
Free and open-
source software
portal

Compatibility of C and C++

Comparison of Pascal and C
Comparison of programming languages
International Obfuscated C Code Contest
List of C-family programming languages

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List of C compilers

Notes
a. 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.
b. 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 afforded to any
other function.
c. Prior to C99, an explicit return 0; statement was required at the end of the main function.
d. Code of print_array (not shown) slightly differs, too.

References
1. Prinz, Peter; Crawford, Tony (December 16, 2005). C in a Nutshell (https://books.google.com/b
ooks?id=4Mfe4sAMFUYC). O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 3. ISBN 9780596550714.
2. Ritchie (1993): "Thompson had made a brief attempt to produce a system coded in an early
version of C—before structures—in 1972, but gave up the effort."
3. "N3221 – Editor's Report, Post January 2024 Strasbourg France Meeting" (https://www.open-st
d.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3221.htm). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14. Open Standards.
February 21, 2024. Retrieved May 24, 2024.
4. 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 Algol's adherents would approve
of."
5. "Verilog HDL (and C)" (https://web.archive.org/web/20131106064022/http://cs.anu.edu.au/cour
ses/ENGN3213/lectures/lecture6_VERILOG_2010.pdf) (PDF). The Research School of
Computer Science at the Australian National University. June 3, 2010. Archived from the
original (http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/ENGN3213/lectures/lecture6_VERILOG_2010.pdf)
(PDF) on November 6, 2013. Retrieved August 19, 2013. "1980s: Verilog first introduced;
Verilog inspired by the C programming language"
6. "The name is based on, and pronounced like the letter C in the English alphabet" (https://eng.ic
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Further reading
Plauger, P.J. (1992). The Standard C Library (1 ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0131315099.
(source) (https://github.com/wuzhouhui/c_standard_lib)
Banahan, M.; Brady, D.; Doran, M. (1991). The C Book: Featuring the ANSI C Standard (2 ed.).
Addison-Wesley. ISBN 978-0201544336. (free) (https://github.com/wardvanwanrooij/thecbook)
Feuer, Alan R. (1985). The C Puzzle Book (1 ed.). Prentice Hall. ISBN 0131099345.
Harbison, Samuel; Steele, Guy Jr. (2002). C: A Reference Manual (5 ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-
0130895929. (archive) (https://archive.org/details/creferencemanual00harb)
King, K.N. (2008). C Programming: A Modern Approach (2 ed.). W. W. Norton. ISBN 978-
0393979503. (archive) (https://archive.org/details/cprogrammingmode0000king)
Griffiths, David; Griffiths, Dawn (2012). Head First C (1 ed.). O'Reilly. ISBN 978-1449399917.

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Perry, Greg; Miller, Dean (2013). C Programming: Absolute Beginner's Guide (3 ed.). Que.
ISBN 978-0789751980.
Deitel, Paul; Deitel, Harvey (2015). C: How to Program (8 ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-
0133976892.
Gustedt, Jens (2019). Modern C (2 ed.). Manning. ISBN 978-1617295812. (free) (https://gustedt.gi
tlabpages.inria.fr/modern-c/)

External links
ISO C Working Group official website (https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/)
ISO/IEC 9899 (https://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/standards), publicly
available official C documents, including the C99 Rationale
"C99 with Technical corrigenda TC1, TC2, and TC3 included" (https://www.open-std.org/JT
C1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n1256.pdf) (PDF). Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20071
025205438/http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/docs/n1256.pdf) (PDF) from
the original on October 25, 2007. (3.61 MB)
comp.lang.c Frequently Asked Questions (https://c-faq.com/)
A History of C (https://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/3e/docs/chistory.html), by Dennis Ritchie
C Library Reference and Examples (https://en.cppreference.com/w/c)

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