Introduction to C Programming

History of C

• C evolved from two previous languages, BCPL and B. BCPL was developed in 1967 by Martin Richards as a language for writing operating systems software and compilers. Ken Thompson modeled many features in his B language after their counterparts in BCPL and used B to create early versions of the UNIX operating system.

• The C language was evolved from B by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Laboratories. C uses many of the important concepts of BCPL and B while adding data typing and other powerful features.

• C initially became widely known as the development language of the UNIX operating system.

• C is available for most computers. C is mostly hardware independent.

• The publication in 1978 of Kernighan and Ritchie’s book, “The C Programming Language”, enthralled to the language.

• In 1989, the C standard was approved; this standard was updated in 1999.

• C99 is a revised standard for the C programming language that refines and expands the capabilities of C, but it has not be universally adopted. It means Not all popular C compilers support C99.

Because C is a hardware-independent, widely available language, applications written in C can run with little or no modifications on a wide range of different computer systems.