C: The basic Programming language

Its features and applications

In this article we will understand some most important things related to C programming language. Justification will be in a simple way, helps to acquire basic knowledge of C language.

Overview:

C is a general-purpose, procedural computer programming language supporting structured programming, lexical variable scope, and recursion, with a static type system. By design, C provides constructs that map efficiently to typical machine instructions. It has found lasting use in applications previously coded in assembly language. Such applications include operating systems and various application software for computer architectures that range from supercomputers to PLCs and embedded systems.

C is an imperative procedural language. 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 run-time 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.

Brief History:

C was created by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the early 1970s as an augmented version of Ken Thompson's B. Another Bell Labs employee, Brian Kernighan, had written the first C tutorial, and he persuaded Ritchie to coauthor a book on the language. Kernighan would write most of the book's "expository" material, and Ritchie's reference manual became its appendices.

The first edition, published February 22, 1978, was the first widely available book on the C programming language. Its version of C is sometimes termed K&R C (after the book's authors), often to distinguish this early version from the later version of C standardized as ANSI C.

Features Of C Programming Language:

1. Portability

It refers to the usability of the same fragment of code in different environments. C programs are capable of being written on one platform and being run on another with or without any modification.

2. Modularity/Structured Language

This feature of C language allows the program to be broken into smaller units and run individually with the help of functions. In simple words, modular programming refers to the software design technique, which increases the number of fragments of the same code. For instance, you want to find the area of a square, a rectangle and, a triangle. Instead of writing the code as a whole, we can divide it into separate functions, one for finding the area of a square, a rectangle, and triangle respectively. It guarantees fewer chances of errors and makes it visually appealing and more organized.

3. Simple and Efficient

The syntax style of C programming is easy to comprehend and can be used to design applications that were previously designed by assembly language. In high schools or colleges, C is generally taught as an introductory programming language as it is a well-established fact that it is easier to learn any other programming language in the long run if you are well acquainted with C.

4. Speed

Since it is a compiler-based language, it is comparatively faster than other programming languages like Java or Python, which are interpreter based. A compiler considers the entire program as input and thereby generates an output file with the object code whereas an interpreter takes instruction by instruction as input and then generates an output but does not generate a file.

5. Popular

It is one of the most extensively used languages in the development of operating and embedded systems.

6. Existence of Libraries

C language comprises of its library which has a wide range of built-in functions. Even the user-defined functions can be added to the C library. It gives the user a wide latitude of scope to develop his own functions for implementing problems for later use and implementation.

7. Dynamism

It supports the feature of DMA (Dynamic Memory Allocation), which helps in the utilization and management of memory. Among all the features of C, dynamism is unique. Using DMA, the size of a data structure can be changed during run-time using some predefined functions in the C library such as malloc(), calloc(), free() and realloc().

8. Case Sensitive

It treats lowercase and uppercase characters differently. For instance, if we declare a variable ‘x’ of integer type, it would connote a different meaning altogether if we type ‘X’ rather than ‘x’.

Applications and Uses:

C is still very popular due to its use in systems development, including operating systems, embedded devices, and firmware. The C standard library has been ported to many platforms, so it is viable in many use cases. However, the low-level systems programming it is typically used for is a more specialized skill than general application programming.          

General Use of C language:

• Embedded systems
• Hardware drivers
• Local Applications