ZDNet Definition for: C

(1) See coulomb.

(2) A high-level programming language developed at Bell Labs that is able to manipulate the computer at a low level like assembly language. During the last half of the 1980s, C became the language of choice for developing commercial software. C, and its object-oriented successor C++, are used to write a huge variety of applications and almost all operating systems. There are C/C++ compilers for all major operating systems and hardware platforms. C was standardized by ANSI (X3J11 committee) and ISO in 1989. See C++ and C#.

Nothing But Functions
C and C++ are written as a series of functions that call each other for processing. Even the body of the program is a function named "main." Functions are very flexible, allowing programmers to choose from the standard library that comes with the compiler, to use third party libraries or to develop their own.

Its Origin
C was developed to allow Unix to run on a variety of computers. After Bell Labs' Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie created Unix and got it running on several PDP computers, they wanted a way to easily port it to other machines without having to rewrite it from scratch. Thompson created the B language, which was a simpler version of the BCPL language, itself a version of CPL. Later, in order to improve B, Thompson and Ritchie created C.

Compared to many other high-level programming languages, C appears somewhat cryptic. The following C example converts Fahrenheit to centigrade:

     main()   {
     float fahr;
     printf("Enter Fahrenheit ");
     scanf("%f", &fahr);
     printf("Celsius is %fn", (fahr-32)*5/9);
              }

Reproduced with permission from Computer Desktop Encyclopedia. Copyright (c) 1981-2008 The Computer Language Company Inc. All rights reserved.