From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"C programming language" redirects here. For the book, see The C Programming Language.

Not to be confused with C++ or C#.

Cover graphic of The C Programming Language, co-authored by C's

original designer Dennis Ritchie[1]

Paradigm Multi-paradigm: imperative (procedural), structured

Designed b Dennis Ritchie

Developer ANSI X3J11 (ANSI C); ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical

Committee 1) / SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) / WG 14

(Working Group 14) (ISO C)

First appea 1972; 51 years ago[2]

red

Stable C17 / June 2018; 4 years ago

release

Preview C23 (N3088) / January 24, 2023; 37 days ago[3]

release

Typing Static, weak, manifest, nominal

discipline

OS Cross-platform
 Filename .c, .h

extensions

Website www.iso.org/standard/74528.html

www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/

Major implementations

pcc, GCC, Clang, Intel C, C++Builder, Microsoft Visual C++, Watcom C

Dialects

Cyclone, Unified Parallel C, Split-C, Cilk, C*

Influenced by

B (BCPL, CPL), ALGOL 68,[4] assembly, PL/I, FORTRAN

Influenced

Numerous: AMPL, AWK, csh, C++, C--, C#, Objective-C, D, Go, Java, Jav

aScript, JS++, Julia, Limbo, LPC, Perl, PHP, Pike, Processing, Python, Rus

t, Seed7, Vala, Verilog (HDL),[5] Nim, Zig

  C Programming at Wikibooks

C (pronounced /ˈsiː/ – like the letter c)[6] is a general-purpose computer 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, device drivers, protocol stacks, though decreasingly[7] for application software.
C is commonly used on computer architectures that range from the largest supercomputers to the
smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems.
A successor to the programming language B, C was originally developed at Bell Labs by Ritchie
between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was applied to re-implementing the
kernel of the Unix operating system.[8] During the 1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has
become one of the most widely used programming languages,[9][10] with C compilers available for
practically all modern computer architectures and operating systems. C has been standardized
by ANSI since 1989 (ANSI C) and by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
C is an imperative procedural language, supporting structured programming, lexical variable
scope and recursion, with a static type system. It was designed to be compiled to provide low-
level access to memory and language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, all with
minimal runtime support. Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage
cross-platform programming. A standards-compliant C program written with portability in mind can
be compiled for a wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few changes to its
source code.[11]
Since 2000, C has consistently ranked among the top two languages in the TIOBE index, a measure
of the popularity of programming languages.[12]

Overview[edit]

Dennis Ritchie (right), the inventor of the C programming language, with Ken Thompson

C is an imperative, procedural language in the ALGOL tradition. It has a static type system. In C,

all executable code is contained within subroutines (also called "functions", though not in the sense
of functional 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. The semicolon separates statements and curly braces are
used for grouping blocks of statements.
The C language also exhibits the following characteristics:

 The language has a small, fixed number of keywords, 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:
o Function return values can be ignored, when not needed.
o Function and data pointers permit ad hoc run-time polymorphism.
o Functions may not be defined within the lexical scope of other functions.
o Variables may be defined within a function, with scope.
o 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.
o Heterogeneous aggregate data types ( struct ) allow related data elements to be accessed
and assigned as a unit.
o Union is a structure with overlapping members; only the last member stored is valid.
o Array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic. Unlike structs,
arrays are not first-class objects: they cannot be assigned or compared using single built-in
 operators. There is no "array" keyword in use or definition; instead, square brackets indicate
arrays syntactically, for example  month[11] .
o Enumerated types are possible with the  enum  keyword. They are freely interconvertible with
integers.
o Strings are not a distinct data type, but are conventionally implemented as null-
terminated character arrays.
 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 untyped
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[edit]
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, Pyth
on, 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 (Python being a dramatic exception) 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[edit]
Early developments[edit]
Timeline of C language[11]

Year Informal name C Standard

1972 Birth —

1978 K&R C —

1989/199
ANSI C, ISO C ISO/IEC 9899:1990
0

1999 C99 ISO/IEC 9899:1999

 2011 C11, C1x ISO/IEC 9899:2011

2018 C17 ISO/IEC 9899:2018

2023* C23, C2x TBA

The origin of C is closely tied to the development of the Unix operating system, originally

implemented in assembly language on a PDP-7 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, incorporating
several ideas from colleagues. Eventually, they decided to port the operating system to a PDP-11.
The original PDP-11 version of Unix was also developed in assembly language. [8]
B[edit]
Main article: B (programming language)

Thompson wanted a programming language for developing utilities for the new platform. At first, he
tried to write a Fortran compiler, but soon gave up the idea. Instead, he created a cut-down version
of the recently developed BCPL systems programming language. The official description of BCPL
was not available at the time[13] and Thompson modified the syntax to be less wordy, and similar to a
simplified ALGOL known as SMALGOL.[14] Thompson called the result B.[8] He described B as "BCPL
semantics with a lot of SMALGOL syntax".[14] Like BCPL, B had a bootstrapping compiler to facilitate
porting to new machines.[14] However, few utilities were ultimately 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[edit]
In 1971, Ritchie started to improve B, to utilise the features of the more-powerful PDP-11. A
significant addition was a character data type. He called this New B.[14] Thompson started to use NB
to write the Unix kernel, and his requirements shaped the direction of the language development. [14]
[15]
 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.[8]
The C compiler and some utilities made with it were included in Version 2 Unix, which is also known
as Research Unix.[16]
Structures and the Unix kernel re-write[edit]
At Version 4 Unix, released in November 1973, the Unix kernel was extensively re-implemented in
C.[8] 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.[8]
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.[15]
K&R C[edit]
The cover of the book The C Programming Language, first edition, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of The C Programming

Language.[17] This book, known to C programmers as K&R, 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 also referred to as C78.[18] The second edition of the
book[19] 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 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:

long some_function(); /* This is a function declaration, so the compiler can

know the name and return type of this function. */
/* int */ other_function(); /* Another function declaration. There is an
implicit 'int' type here since we're talking about early version of C. It's
commented out here to show where it could go in later variants. */
/* int */ calling_function() /* this is a function definition, including the
body of the code following in the { curly brackets } the return type is
'int', but this is implicit so no need to state 'int' when using this early
version of C */
{
long test1;
register /* int */ test2; /* again, note the 'int' is not required here,
and shown as */
/* a comment just to illustrate where it would
be required in later variants 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 multiple 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[20]) 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
 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. [citation needed]
ANSI C and ISO C[edit]
Main article: ANSI 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. [21]
C99[edit]
Main article: 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.[22]
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[when?] 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.[23][needs update]
In addition, the standard[which?] requires support for Unicode identifiers (variable / function names) in
the form of escaped characters (e.g.  \U0001f431 ) and suggests support for raw Unicode names.

C11[edit]
Main article: C11 (C standard revision)

In 2007, work began on another revision of the C standard, informally called "C1X" until its official
publication of ISO/IEC 9899:2011 on 2011-12-08. 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[edit]
Main article: C17 (C standard revision)

Published in June 2018 as ISO/IEC 9899:2018, C17 is the current standard for the C programming
language. It introduces no new language features, only technical corrections, and clarifications to
defects in C11. The standard macro  __STDC_VERSION__  is defined as  201710L .

C2x[edit]
Main article: C2x

C2x is an informal name for the next (after C17) major C language standard revision. It is expected
to be voted on in 2023 and would therefore be called C23. [24][better  source  needed]
Embedded C[edit]
Main article: Embedded C

Historically, embedded C programming requires nonstandard extensions to the C language in order

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[25] 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[edit]
Main article: C syntax

C has a formal grammar specified by the C standard.[26] 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.[27]
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 may be 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 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."[28] 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[edit]
The basic C source character set includes the following characters:

 Lowercase and uppercase letters of ISO Basic Latin Alphabet:  a – z   A – Z

 Decimal digits:  0 – 9
 Graphic characters:  ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? [ \ ] ^ _ { | } ~
 Whitespace characters: space, horizontal tab, vertical tab, form feed, newline
Newline indicates the end of a text line; it need not correspond to an actual single character,
although for convenience C treats it as one.
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
the  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[edit]
C89 has 32 reserved words, also known as keywords, which are the words that cannot be used for
any purposes other than those for which they are predefined:

 auto
 break
 case
 char
 const
 continue
 default
 do
 double
 else
 enum
 extern
 float
 for
 goto
 if
 int
 long
 register
 return
 short
 signed
 sizeof
 static
 struct
 switch
 typedef
 union
 unsigned
 void
 volatile
 while
C99 reserved five more words:

 _Bool
 _Complex
 _Imaginary
 inline
 restrict
C11 reserved seven more words:[29]

 _Alignas
 _Alignof
 _Atomic
 _Generic
 _Noreturn
 _Static_assert
 _Thread_local
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. The
language previously included a reserved word called  entry , but this was seldom implemented, and
has now[when?] been removed as a reserved word.[30]
Operators[edit]
Main article: Operators in C and C++

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
 order relations:  < ,  <= ,  > ,  >=
 reference and dereference:  & ,  * ,  [ ]
 sequencing:  ,
 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 these two operators (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 if  a  is not zero after the assignment.[31]
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.[32]

"Hello, world" example[edit]

"Hello, World!" program by Brian Kernighan (1978)

See also: Hello, world

The "hello, world" example, which 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:[33]

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

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

#include <stdio.h>
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 with the entire text of the  stdio.h  standard header, which
contains declarations for standard input and output functions such as  printf  and  scanf . The
angle brackets surrounding  stdio.h  indicate that  stdio.h  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 next 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 that is 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 this function takes no arguments. [b]
The opening curly brace indicates the beginning of the definition of the  main  function.
The next line calls (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 (provided with) a single argument,
the address of the first character in the string literal  "hello, world\n" . The string literal is an
unnamed array with elements of type  char , set up automatically by the compiler with a final 0-
valued character to mark the end of the array ( printf  needs to know this). The  \n  is an 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 determine whether or not
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. (Formerly an explicit  return 0;  statement
was required.) This is interpreted by the run-time system as an exit code indicating successful
execution.[34]

Data types[edit]
Main article: C variable types and declarations

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this

article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (October 2012)  (Learn how and when to remove this
template message)
The type system in C is static and weakly typed, which makes it similar to the type system
of ALGOL descendants such as Pascal.[35] 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 datatype. 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".)[36]
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[edit]
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-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 .[34]
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, or as the  NULL  macro defined by several standard headers. 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. [34]
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[edit]
See also: C string

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.[37][38] 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 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)
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:

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;
// 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[edit]
The subscript notation  x[i]  (where  x  designates a pointer) is syntactic sugar for  *(x+i) .
[39]
 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+1 th 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  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[edit]
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:[34]

 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.[34] Prior to the C99 standard, variable-sized
arrays were a common example of this. (See the article on  malloc  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 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[edit]
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. In order 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").[34]
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.[34]
File handling and streams[edit]
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 [clarification needed] but are generally part of "bare
metal" programming (programming that's independent of any operating system such as
most embedded programming). With few exceptions, implementations include low-level I/O.

Language tools[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this
article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (July 2014)  (Learn how and when to remove this template
message)

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. The tool lint was the first such, leading to many others.
Automated source code checking and auditing are beneficial in any language, and for C many such
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 likely to actually be
errors. MISRA C is a proprietary set of guidelines to avoid such questionable code, developed for
embedded systems.[40]
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.
Tools such as Purify or Valgrind and linking with libraries containing special versions of the memory
allocation functions can help uncover runtime errors in memory usage.

Uses[edit]
Rationale for use in systems programming[edit]

The C Programming Language

C is widely used for systems programming in implementing operating systems and embedded

system applications.[41] This is for several reasons:

 The code generated after compilation doesn't demand many system features, and can be
invoked from some boot code in a straightforward manner – it's 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's fast to execute.
 With its rich set of operators, the C language can utilise 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.
 Platform hardware can 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 interacts well with the platform it's running on.
 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.
 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's 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.
Once used for web development[edit]
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.[42] C may have been chosen over interpreted languages because of its speed, stability, and
near-universal availability.[43] It is no longer common practice for web development to be done in C,
[44]
 and many other web development tools exist.
Some other languages are themselves written in C[edit]
A consequence of C's wide availability and efficiency is that compilers, libraries and interpreters of
other programming languages are often implemented in C.[45] For example, the reference
implementations of Python,[46] Perl,[47] Ruby,[48] and PHP[49] are written in C.
Used for computationally-intensive libraries[edit]
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[edit]
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.
End-user applications[edit]
C has also been widely used to implement end-user applications.[citation needed] However, such
applications can also be written in newer, higher-level languages.

Limitations[edit]
the power of assembly language and the convenience of ... assembly language

— Dennis Ritchie[50]
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. Bugs include:
Memory leaks when memory is allocated but not freed; and access to previously freed memory.
 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 ,[51][52] and some
with additional keywords e.g. use  __cdecl  calling convention. But the directive and options are
not consistently supported.[53]
 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. 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[54] to implement a try-
catch mechanism via macros.
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.
Some of these drawbacks have prompted the construction of other languages.

Related languages[edit]

The TIOBE index graph, showing a comparison of the popularity of various programming languages [55]
C has both directly and indirectly influenced many later languages such as C+
+, C#, D, Go, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Rust and Unix's C shell.[56] 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.
Several C or near-C interpreters exist, including Ch and CINT, which 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.[57]
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.[58] 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[when?] 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.