The C language is a general-purpose computer programming language that is widely used. The design goals of C are to provide a programming language that can be easily compiled, handle low-level memory, generate a small amount of machine code, and run without any runtime environment support.
Despite providing many low-level processing capabilities, C language maintains good cross-platform features, allowing programs written in standard C to be compiled on many computer platforms, including some embedded processors (microcontrollers or MCUs) and supercomputers.
In the 1980s, to avoid differences in C language syntax used by various development vendors, the American National Standards Institute established a complete international standard syntax for C language, known as ANSI C, which serves as the original standard for C language.
1. Development History
The C language is named C because it originated from the B language invented by Ken Thompson, which in turn came from the BCPL language.
In 1967, Martin Richards from Cambridge University simplified the CPL language, resulting in the creation of the BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language).
In the 1960s, Ken Thompson, a researcher at AT&T Bell Laboratories, was bored and wanted to play a video game he had developed, simulating space travel in the solar system—Space Travel. He secretly found an idle machine, the PDP-7. However, this machine did not have an operating system, and the game needed some functionalities from an operating system. So, he set out to develop an operating system for the PDP-7. Later, this operating system was named UNIX.
In 1970, Ken Thompson at Bell Labs designed a simple language very close to hardware, called B language (named after the first letter of BCPL), based on BCPL. He used B language to write the first UNIX operating system.
In 1971, Dennis M. Ritchie, who also loved Space Travel, joined Thompson’s development project to collaborate on UNIX. His main task was to refine the B language to make it more mature.
In 1972, D. M. Ritchie at Bell Labs finally designed a new language based on B language, naming it C after the second letter of BCPL.
By early 1973, the main body of the C language was completed. Thompson and Ritchie eagerly began to fully rewrite UNIX using it. At this point, the joy of programming had made them completely forget about