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C - Language Brief Guide

The document provides an overview of the C programming language, including its history, syntax, data types, control structures, and functions. It details that C was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs to develop the Unix operating system and became popular for its efficiency and ability to handle low-level tasks. The syntax of C is relatively simple, using basic constructs like functions and control statements. It supports fundamental data types like integers, characters, and floating-point numbers.

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Mudassar Tehseen Mangan
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
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58 views

C - Language Brief Guide

The document provides an overview of the C programming language, including its history, syntax, data types, control structures, and functions. It details that C was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs to develop the Unix operating system and became popular for its efficiency and ability to handle low-level tasks. The syntax of C is relatively simple, using basic constructs like functions and control statements. It supports fundamental data types like integers, characters, and floating-point numbers.

Uploaded by

Mudassar Tehseen Mangan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction:

C is a powerful and widely-used programming language that has been around for several

decades. Developed in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs, C was initially designed as

a system programming language for writing operating systems. However, it quickly became

popular among programmers due to its flexibility, efficiency, and ability to handle low-level

programming tasks. In this article, we will explore C language in detail, covering its history,

syntax, data types, control structures, functions, pointers, and more.

History:

As mentioned earlier, C was created in the early 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. At the time,

Ritchie was working on an operating system called Unix, which needed a programming language

to interact with the hardware. The language that Ritchie and his team created was initially called

"B", but it soon evolved into C.

C quickly became popular among programmers due to its efficiency, flexibility, and ability to

handle low-level programming tasks. In 1978, the first edition of "The C Programming Language,"

a book by Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan, was published. This book became a standard

reference for C programmers and helped to popularize the language further.

In the 1980s, C became the language of choice for writing operating systems, compilers, and

other system-level software. It was also widely used in the development of video games and

other applications that required high performance. In the 1990s, C++ was developed as an

extension of C, adding object-oriented programming features to the language.

Syntax:

The syntax of C is relatively simple and easy to learn. Here is an example of a basic C program:

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#include <stdio.h> int main() { printf("Hello, World!"); return 0; }

Let's break this program down line by line:


c

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#include <stdio.h>

This line is a preprocessor directive that tells the compiler to include the "stdio.h" header file,

which contains the declarations for the standard input and output functions.

csharp

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int main() {

This line defines the main function, which is the entry point for the program.

bash

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printf("Hello, World!");

This line uses the printf function to print the string "Hello, World!" to the console.

kotlin

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return 0; }

This line ends the main function and returns the value 0 to the operating system, indicating that

the program executed successfully.

Data Types:

C provides several data types for storing different kinds of data, including integers, floating-point

numbers, characters, and more. Here is a list of the basic data types in C:

● char: Used to store a single character.


● int: Used to store integers.
● float: Used to store floating-point numbers with single precision.
● double: Used to store floating-point numbers with double precision.
● void: Used to represent the absence of a value.

Control Structures:
C provides several control structures for controlling the flow of a program, including if-else

statements, loops, and switch statements. Here is an example of an if-else statement in C:

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if (x > y) { printf("x is greater than y"); } else { printf("y is greater than x");

This code compares the values of x and y and prints a message indicating which value is greater.

Functions:

C allows programmers to define their own functions for performing specific tasks. Here is an

example of a function that calculates the factorial of a number:

java

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int factorial(int n) { if (n == 0) { return 1; } else { return n * factorial(n -

1); } }

This function takes

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