C programming Language

C language is traditionally called the development language of the UNIX operating system, the language used to write operating system. It is a common industrial programming language, and many software packages vendors are written in C language. These includes operating systems as well as word processing, database management, and graphics software.

C is a high-level programming language. C is used throughout the computing world because of its power to facilitate programming at almost machine level while retaining high-level characteristics such as probability across a variety of machine architectures.

C evolved from two earlier languages: BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) and B.BPCL was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards of Cambridge University as a language for writing operating systems software and compliers. In 1970 Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories developed the language, based on BPCL, to implement the first UNIX operating system. V developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie of Bell Laboratories, is an outgrowth of B and provides a combination of the features of a structured high-level programming language and those of a low-level assembly language.

Both BCPL and B were type-less languages. They did not distinguish, for instance between integer and decimal values. The typical data type in these languages was based on machine organization with abundant use of memory address arithmetic. That is, instead of referring to data symbolically through variable names, programmers had to specify particular memory addresses for data storage and retrieval. The C language was a result of the way software developers used the basic idea of structured programming. These ideas include explicit data typing, which means that all variable must be given a specific data type from a set of predefined choices; control structures without GOTOs, such as the IF, ELSE and the WHILE loop, and bloc-structured programming allowing easier program design and debugging.

The rapid expansion of C for various platforms i.e. computer systems led to many similar but often incompatible variations. This was a serious problem for software developers who needed to create portable code that could be used on different machines. In 1983 a subcommittee was formed by the American National Standards Institutes (ANSI) committee on computer and information processing to provide an unambiguous and machine-independent definition of the language. in 1989 the ANSI C standard was approved