C Programming Language

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What Does C Programming Language Mean?

C is a high-level and general-purpose programming language that is ideal for developing firmware or portable applications. Originally intended for writing system software, C was developed at Bell Labs by Dennis Ritchie for the Unix Operating System in the early 1970s.

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Ranked among the most widely used languages, C has a compiler for most computer systems and has influenced many popular languages – notably C++.

Techopedia Explains C Programming Language

C belongs to the structured, procedural paradigms of languages. It is proven, flexible and powerful and may be used for a variety of different applications. Although high level, C and assembly language share many of the same attributes.

Some of C's most important features include:

  • Fixed number of keywords, including a set of control primitives, such as if, for, while, switch and do while
  • Multiple logical and mathematical operators, including bit manipulators
  • Multiple assignments may be applied in a single statement.
  • Function return values are not always required and may be ignored if unneeded.
  • Typing is static. All data has type but may be implicitly converted.
  • Basic form of modularity, as files may be separately compiled and linked
  • Control of function and object visibility to other files via extern and static attributes
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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.