Introduction to C
C is a general-purpose, high-level language that was originally developed by Dennis M. Ritchie to develop the UNIX operating system at Bell Labs. C was originally first implemented on the DEC PDP-11 computer in 1972. In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie produced the first publicly available description of C, now known as the K&R standard. The UNIX operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX application programs have been written in C. C has now become a widely used professional language for various reasons:
- Easy to learn
- Structured language
- It produces efficient programs
- It can handle low-level activities
- It can be compiled on a variety of computer platforms
Some examples of the use of C language are:
- Operating System
- Language Compiler
- Assemblers
- Text Editor
- Network Drivers
- Database
- Utilities
C Programs
A C program can vary from 3 lines to millions of lines and it should be written into one or more text files with extension ".c"; for example, hello.c. You can use "vi", "vim" or any other text editor to write your C program into a file. This tutorial assumes that you know how to edit a text file and how to write source code inside a program file.
For Example:
/*Hello world program*/
#include <stdio.h>
int main( )
{
printf("Hello world");
return 0;
}
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