Why to Learn C Language
Learn C and C++
C is a powerful system programming language, and C++ is an excellent general purpose programming language with modern bells and whistles.C is a general purpose high level language that was originally developed by Dennis M. Ritchie to develop the Unix operating system at Bell Labs. C was originally first implemented on the DEC PDP-11 computer in 1972.
In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie produced the first publicly available description of C, now known as the K&R standard.
The UNIX operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX applications programs have been written in C. The C has now become a widely used professional language for various reasons.
- Easy to learn
- Structured language
- It produces efficient programs.
- It can handle low-level activities.
- It can be compiled on a variety of computer platforms.
- C was invented to write an operating system called UNIX.
- C is a successor of B language which was introduced around 1970
- The language was formalized in 1988 by the American National Standard Institute (ANSI).
- The UNIX OS was totally written in C By 1973.
- Today C is the most widely used and popular System Programming Language.
- Most of the state of the art software's have been implemented using C.
- Today's most popular Linux OS and RBDMS MySQL have been written in C.
C was initially used for system development work, in particular the programs that make-up the operating system. C was adopted as a system development language because it produces code that runs nearly as fast as code written in assembly language. Some examples of the use of C might be:
- Operating Systems
- Language Compilers
- Assemblers
- Text Editors
- Print Spoolers
- Network Drivers
- Modern Programs
- Data Bases
- Language Interpreters
- Utilities
C Programs
A C program can vary from 3 lines to millions of lines and it should be written into one or more text files with extension ".c" for example hello.c. You can use "vi", "vim" or any other text editor to write your C program into a file.
This tutorial assumes that you know how to edit a text file and how to write source code inside a program file.Before you start doing programming using C programming language, you need following two software's available on your computer, (a) Text Editor and (b) The C Compiler.
Text Editor
This will be used to type your program. Examples of few editors include Windows Notepad, OS Edit command, Brief, Epsilon, EMACS, and vim or vi
Name and version of text editor can vary on different operating systems. For example Notepad will be used on Windows and vim or vi can be used on windows as well as Linux, or Unix.
The files you create with your editor are called source files and contain program source code. The source files for C programs are typically named with the extension .c.
Before starting your programming, make sure you have one text editor in place and you have enough experience to write a computer program, save it in a file, compile it and finally execute it.
The C Compiler
The source code written in source file is the human readable source for your program. It needs to be "compiled", to turn into machine language so that your CPU can actually execute the program as per instructions given.
This C programming language compiler will be used to compile your source code into final executable program. I assume you have basic knowledge about a programming language compiler.
Most frequently used and free available compiler is GNU C/C++ compiler, otherwise you can have compilers either from HP or Solaris if you have respective Operating Systems.
Following section guides you on how to install GNU C/C++ compiler on various OS. I'm mentioning C/C++ together because GNU gcc compiler works for both C and C++ programming languages.
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