An Introduction to C

C is a general purpose structured programming language.Its instructions consist of terms that resemble algebraic expressions, augmented by certain English keywords such as if, else, for, do and while. In this respect it resembles high level structured programming languages such as Pascal and Fortran. C also contains additional features,however, that allow it to be used at a lower level ,thus bridging the gap between machine language and high level language. Therefore C is called a middle level language. 


C was developed in the 1970's by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone Laboratories,Inc.(now a part of AT&T). It is an outgrowth of two earlier languages, called BCPL and B, which were also developed at Bell Laboratories.


C is characterized by the ability to write very concise source programs,due in part to  the large number of operators included within the language. It has a relatively small instruction set, though actual implementations include extensive library functions which enhance the basic instructions. C encourages users to create their own library fuctions.


An important characteristic of C is that its programs are highly portable, even more so than with other high level programming languages. The reason for this is that C relegates  most computer dependent features to its library functions. Thus , every version of C is accompanied by its own set of library functions which are relatively standardized. Therefore most C programs can be processed on many different computers with little or no alteration.