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Contents
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Overview

History

Syntax

"Hello, world" example

Data types

Memory management


Libraries

Language tools

Uses

Limitations

Related languages

See also

Notes

References


 Sources

Further reading

External links

C (programming language)
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from C language)
"C programming language" redirects here. For the book, see The C Programming
Language.
Not to be confused with C++ or C#.

Cover graphic of The C Programming Language, co-authored by C's

original designer Dennis Ritchie[1]

Paradigm Multi-paradigm: imperative (procedural), structured

Designed  Dennis Ritchie

by

Developer ANSI X3J11 (ANSI C); ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical

 Committee 1) / SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) / WG 14

(Working Group 14) (ISO C)

First appe 1972; 51 years ago[2]

ared

Stable C17 / June 2018; 4 years ago

release

Preview C23 (N3088) / January 24, 2023; 24 days ago[3]

release

Typing Static, weak, manifest, nominal

discipline

OS Cross-platform

Filename .c, .h

extensions

Website www.iso.org/standard/74528.html

www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/

Major implementations

pcc, GCC, Clang, Intel C, C++Builder, Microsoft Visual C++, Watcom

Dialects

Cyclone, Unified Parallel C, Split-C, Cilk, C*

Influenced by

B (BCPL, CPL), ALGOL 68,[4] assembly, PL/I, FORTRAN

Influenced

Numerous: AMPL, AWK, csh, C++, C--, C#, Objective-C, D, Go, Jav
 a, JavaScript, JS++, Julia, Limbo, LPC, Perl, PHP, Pike, Processing, Py

thon, Rust, Seed7, Vala, Verilog (HDL),[5] Nim, Zig

  C Programming at Wikibooks

C (pronounced /ˈsiː/ – like the letter c)[6] is a general-purpose computer programming

language. It was created in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie, and remains very widely
used and influential. By design, C's features cleanly reflect the capabilities of the
targeted CPUs. It has found lasting use in operating systems, device
drivers, protocol stacks, though decreasingly[7] for application software. C is
commonly used on computer architectures that range from the
largest supercomputers to the smallest microcontrollers and embedded systems.
A successor to the programming language B, C was originally developed at Bell
Labs by Ritchie between 1972 and 1973 to construct utilities running on Unix. It was
applied to re-implementing the kernel of the Unix operating system. [8] During the
1980s, C gradually gained popularity. It has become one of the most widely used
programming languages,[9][10] with C compilers available for practically all
modern computer architectures and operating systems. C has been standardized
by ANSI since 1989 (ANSI C) and by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO).
C is an imperative procedural language, supporting structured programming, lexical
variable scope and recursion, with a static type system. It was designed to
be compiled to provide low-level access to memory and language constructs that
map efficiently to machine instructions, all with minimal runtime support. Despite its
low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage cross-platform
programming. A standards-compliant C program written with portability in mind can
be compiled for a wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few
changes to its source code.[11]
Since 2000, C has consistently ranked among the top two languages in the TIOBE
index, a measure of the popularity of programming languages. [12]

Overview[edit]

Dennis Ritchie (right), the inventor of the C programming language, with Ken Thompson

C is an imperative, procedural language in the ALGOL tradition. It has a static type

system. In C, all executable code is contained within subroutines (also called
"functions", though not in the sense of functional programming). Function
parameters are passed by value, although arrays are passed as pointers, i.e. the
address of the first item in the array. Pass-by-reference is simulated in C by explicitly
passing pointers to the thing being referenced.
C program source text is free-form code.
The semicolon separates statement and curly braces are used for grouping blocks of
statements.
The C language also exhibits the following characteristics:

 The language has a small, fixed number of keywords, including a full set
of control flow primitives:  if/else ,  for ,  do/while ,  while , and  switch . User-
defined names are not distinguished from keywords by any kind of sigil.
 It has a large number of arithmetic, bitwise, and logic operators:  + , += , ++ , & , || ,
etc.
 More than one assignment may be performed in a single statement.
 Functions:
o Function return values can be ignored, when not needed.
o Function and data pointers permit ad hoc run-time polymorphism.
o Functions may not be defined within the lexical scope of other functions.
o Variables may be defined within a function, with scope.
o A function may call itself, so recursion is supported.
 Data typing is static, but weakly enforced; all data has a type, but implicit
conversions are possible.
 User-defined (typedef) and compound types are possible.
o Heterogeneous aggregate data types ( struct ) allow related data elements to
be accessed and assigned as a unit.
o Union is a structure with overlapping members; only the last member stored
is valid.
o Array indexing is a secondary notation, defined in terms of pointer arithmetic.
Unlike structs, arrays are not first-class objects: they cannot be assigned or
compared using single built-in operators. There is no "array" keyword in use
or definition; instead, square brackets indicate arrays syntactically, for
example  month[11] .
o Enumerated types are possible with the  enum  keyword. They are freely
interconvertible with integers.
o Strings are not a distinct data type, but are
conventionally implemented as null-terminated character arrays.
 Low-level access to computer memory is possible by converting machine
addresses to pointers.
 Procedures (subroutines not returning values) are a special case of function, with
an untyped return type  void .
 Memory can be allocated to a program with calls to library routines.
 A preprocessor performs macro definition, source code file inclusion,
and conditional compilation.
 There is a basic form of modularity: files can be compiled separately
and linked together, with control over which functions and data objects are visible
to other files via  static  and  extern  attributes.
 Complex functionality such as I/O, string manipulation, and mathematical
functions are consistently delegated to library routines.
 The generated code after compilation has relatively straightforward needs on the
underlying platform, which makes it suitable for creating operating systems and
for use in embedded systems.
While C does not include certain features found in other languages (such as object
orientation and garbage collection), these can be implemented or emulated, often
through the use of external libraries (e.g., the GLib Object System or the Boehm
garbage collector).
Relations to other languages[edit]
Many later languages have borrowed directly or indirectly from C, including C++, C#,
Unix's C
shell, D, Go, Java, JavaScript (including transpilers), Julia, Limbo, LPC, Objective-C, 
Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Swift, Verilog and SystemVerilog (hardware
description languages).[5] These languages have drawn many of their control
structures and other basic features from C. Most of them (Python being a dramatic
exception) also express highly similar syntax to C, and they tend to combine the
recognizable expression and statement syntax of C with underlying type systems,
data models, and semantics that can be radically different.

History[edit]
Early developments[edit]
Timeline of C language

Year Informal name[11] C Standard

1972 Birth

1978 K&R C

1989/199
ANSI C, ISO C ISO/IEC 9899:1990
0

1999 C99 ISO/IEC 9899:1999

2011 C11, C1x ISO/IEC 9899:2011

2018 C17 ISO/IEC 9899:2018

2023* C23, C2x

The origin of C is closely tied to the development of the Unix operating system,

originally implemented in assembly language on a PDP-7 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken
Thompson, incorporating several ideas from colleagues. Eventually, they decided to
port the operating system to a PDP-11. The original PDP-11 version of Unix was
also developed in assembly language.[8]
B[edit]
Main article: B (programming language)
Thompson wanted a programming language for developing utilities for the new
platform. At first, he tried to write a Fortran compiler, but soon gave up the idea.
Instead, he created a cut-down version of the recently developed BCPL systems
programming language. The official description of BCPL was not available at the
time[13] and Thompson modified the syntax to be less wordy, and similar to a
simplified ALGOL known as SMALGOL.[14] Thompson called the result B.[8] He
described B as "BCPL semantics with a lot of SMALGOL syntax". [14] Like BCPL, B
had a bootstrapping compiler to facilitate porting to new machines.[14] However, few
utilities were ultimately written in B because it was too slow, and could not take
advantage of PDP-11 features such as byte addressability.
New B and first C release[edit]
In 1971, Ritchie started to improve B, to utilise the features of the more-powerful
PDP-11. A significant addition was a character data type. He called this New B.
[14]
 Thompson started to use NB to write the Unix kernel, and his requirements shaped
the direction of the language development. [14][15] Through to 1972, richer types were
added to the NB language: NB had arrays of  int  and  char . Pointers, the ability to
generate pointers to other types, arrays of all types, and types to be returned from
functions were all also added. Arrays within expressions became pointers. A new
compiler was written, and the language was renamed C. [8]
The C compiler and some utilities made with it were included in Version 2 Unix,
which is also known as Research Unix.[16]
Structures and the Unix kernel re-write[edit]
At Version 4 Unix, released in November 1973, the Unix kernel was extensively re-
implemented in C.[8] By this time, the C language had acquired some powerful
features such as  struct  types.
The preprocessor was introduced around 1973 at the urging of Alan Snyder and also
in recognition of the usefulness of the file-inclusion mechanisms available in BCPL
and PL/I. Its original version provided only included files and simple string
replacements:  #include  and  #define  of parameterless macros. Soon after that, it
was extended, mostly by Mike Lesk and then by John Reiser, to incorporate macros
with arguments and conditional compilation.[8]
Unix was one of the first operating system kernels implemented in a language other
than assembly. Earlier instances include the Multics system (which was written
in PL/I) and Master Control Program (MCP) for the Burroughs B5000 (which was
written in ALGOL) in 1961. In around 1977, Ritchie and Stephen C. Johnson made
further changes to the language to facilitate portability of the Unix operating system.
Johnson's Portable C Compiler served as the basis for several implementations of C
on new platforms.[15]
K&R C[edit]
The cover of the book The C Programming Language, first edition, by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie published the first edition of The C

Programming Language.[17] This book, known to C programmers as K&R, served for
many years as an informal specification of the language. The version of C that it
describes is commonly referred to as "K&R C". As this was released in 1978, it is
also referred to as C78.[18] The second edition of the book[19] covers the later ANSI
C standard, described below.
K&R introduced several language features:

 Standard I/O library

 long int  data type
 unsigned int  data type
 Compound assignment operators of the form  =op  (such as  =- ) were changed to
the form  op=  (that is,  -= ) to remove the semantic ambiguity created by
constructs such as  i=-10 , which had been interpreted
as  i =- 10  (decrement  i  by 10) instead of the possibly intended  i = -
10  (let  i  be −10).

Even after the publication of the 1989 ANSI standard, for many years K&R C was
still considered the "lowest common denominator" to which C programmers
restricted themselves when maximum portability was desired, since many older
compilers were still in use, and because carefully written K&R C code can be legal
Standard C as well.
In early versions of C, only functions that return types other than  int  must be
declared if used before the function definition; functions used without prior
declaration were presumed to return type  int .
For example:

long some_function(); /* This is a function declaration, so the compiler

can know the name and return type of this function. */
/* int */ other_function(); /* Another function declaration. There is an
implicit 'int' type here since we're talking about early version of C.
It's commented out here to show where it could go in later variants. */
/* int */ calling_function() /* this is a function definition, including
the body of the code following in the { curly brackets } the return type is
'int', but this is implicit so no need to state 'int' when using this early
version of C */
{
long test1;
register /* int */ test2; /* again, note the 'int' is not required
here, and shown as */
/* a comment just to illustrate where it
would be required in later variants of C. */
/* The 'register' keyword indicates to the
compiler that this variable should */
/* ideally be stored in a register as opposed
to within the stack frame. */
test1 = some_function();
if (test1 > 1)
test2 = 0;
else
test2 = other_function();
return test2;
}

The  int  type specifiers which are commented out could be omitted in K&R C, but
are required in later standards.
Since K&R function declarations did not include any information about function
arguments, function parameter type checks were not performed, although some
compilers would issue a warning message if a local function was called with the
wrong number of arguments, or if multiple calls to an external function used different
numbers or types of arguments. Separate tools such as Unix's lint utility were
developed that (among other things) could check for consistency of function use
across multiple source files.
In the years following the publication of K&R C, several features were added to the
language, supported by compilers from AT&T (in particular PCC[20]) and some other
vendors. These included:

 void  functions (i.e., functions with no return value)

 functions returning  struct  or  union  types (previously only a single pointer,
integer or float could be returned)
 assignment for  struct  data types
 enumerated types (previously, preprocessor definitions for integer fixed values
were used, e.g.  #define GREEN 3 )
The large number of extensions and lack of agreement on a standard library,
together with the language popularity and the fact that not even the Unix compilers
precisely implemented the K&R specification, led to the necessity of standardization.
[citation needed]

ANSI C and ISO C[edit]

Main article: ANSI C
During the late 1970s and 1980s, versions of C were implemented for a wide variety
of mainframe computers, minicomputers, and microcomputers, including the IBM
PC, as its popularity began to increase significantly.
In 1983, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formed a committee,
X3J11, to establish a standard specification of C. X3J11 based the C standard on
the Unix implementation; however, the non-portable portion of the Unix C library was
handed off to the IEEE working group 1003 to become the basis for the
1988 POSIX standard. In 1989, the C standard was ratified as ANSI X3.159-1989
"Programming Language C". This version of the language is often referred to
as ANSI C, Standard C, or sometimes C89.
In 1990, the ANSI C standard (with formatting changes) was adopted by
the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 9899:1990,
which is sometimes called C90. Therefore, the terms "C89" and "C90" refer to the
same programming language.
ANSI, like other national standards bodies, no longer develops the C standard
independently, but defers to the international C standard, maintained by the working
group ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG14. National adoption of an update to the
international standard typically occurs within a year of ISO publication.
One of the aims of the C standardization process was to produce a superset of K&R
C, incorporating many of the subsequently introduced unofficial features. The
standards committee also included several additional features such as function
prototypes (borrowed from C++),  void  pointers, support for international character
sets and locales, and preprocessor enhancements. Although the syntax for
parameter declarations was augmented to include the style used in C++, the K&R
interface continued to be permitted, for compatibility with existing source code.
C89 is supported by current C compilers, and most modern C code is based on it.
Any program written only in Standard C and without any hardware-dependent
assumptions will run correctly on any platform with a conforming C implementation,
within its resource limits. Without such precautions, programs may compile only on a
certain platform or with a particular compiler, due, for example, to the use of non-
standard libraries, such as GUI libraries, or to a reliance on compiler- or platform-
specific attributes such as the exact size of data types and byte endianness.
In cases where code must be compilable by either standard-conforming or K&R C-
based compilers, the  __STDC__  macro can be used to split the code into Standard
and K&R sections to prevent the use on a K&R C-based compiler of features
available only in Standard C.
After the ANSI/ISO standardization process, the C language specification remained
relatively static for several years. In 1995, Normative Amendment 1 to the 1990 C
standard (ISO/IEC 9899/AMD1:1995, known informally as C95) was published, to
correct some details and to add more extensive support for international character
sets.[21]
C99[edit]
Main article: C99
The C standard was further revised in the late 1990s, leading to the publication of
ISO/IEC 9899:1999 in 1999, which is commonly referred to as "C99". It has since
been amended three times by Technical Corrigenda. [22]
C99 introduced several new features, including inline functions, several new data
types (including  long long int  and a  complex  type to represent complex
numbers), variable-length arrays and flexible array members, improved support
for IEEE 754 floating point, support for variadic macros (macros of variable arity),
and support for one-line comments beginning with  // , as in BCPL or C++. Many of
these had already been implemented as extensions in several C compilers.
C99 is for the most part backward compatible with C90, but is stricter in some ways;
in particular, a declaration that lacks a type specifier no longer has  int  implicitly
assumed. A standard macro  __STDC_VERSION__  is defined with value  199901L  to
indicate that C99 support is available. GCC, Solaris Studio, and other C compilers
now[when?] support many or all of the new features of C99. The C compiler in Microsoft
Visual C++, however, implements the C89 standard and those parts of C99 that are
required for compatibility with C++11.[23][needs update]
In addition, the standard[which?] requires support for Unicode identifiers (variable /
function names) in the form of escaped characters (e.g.  \U0001f431 ) and suggests
support for raw Unicode names.
C11[edit]
Main article: C11 (C standard revision)
In 2007, work began on another revision of the C standard, informally called "C1X"
until its official publication of ISO/IEC 9899:2011 on 2011-12-08. The C standards
committee adopted guidelines to limit the adoption of new features that had not been
tested by existing implementations.
The C11 standard adds numerous new features to C and the library, including type
generic macros, anonymous structures, improved Unicode support, atomic
operations, multi-threading, and bounds-checked functions. It also makes some
portions of the existing C99 library optional, and improves compatibility with C++.
The standard macro  __STDC_VERSION__  is defined as  201112L  to indicate that C11
support is available.
C17[edit]
Main article: C17 (C standard revision)
Published in June 2018 as ISO/IEC 9899:2018, C17 is the current standard for the C
programming language. It introduces no new language features, only technical
corrections, and clarifications to defects in C11. The standard
macro  __STDC_VERSION__  is defined as  201710L .

C2x[edit]
Main article: C2x
C2x is an informal name for the next (after C17) major C language standard revision.
It is expected to be voted on in 2023 and would therefore be called C23. [24][better source needed]
Embedded C[edit]
Main article: Embedded C
Historically, embedded C programming requires nonstandard extensions to the C
language in order to support exotic features such as fixed-point arithmetic, multiple
distinct memory banks, and basic I/O operations.
In 2008, the C Standards Committee published a technical report extending the C
language[25] to address these issues by providing a common standard for all
implementations to adhere to. It includes a number of features not available in
normal C, such as fixed-point arithmetic, named address spaces, and basic I/O
hardware addressing.

Syntax[edit]
Main article: C syntax
C has a formal grammar specified by the C standard.[26] Line endings are generally
not significant in C; however, line boundaries do have significance during the
preprocessing phase. Comments may appear either between the
delimiters  /*  and  */ , or (since C99) following  //  until the end of the line.
Comments delimited by  /*  and  */  do not nest, and these sequences of characters
are not interpreted as comment delimiters if they appear inside string or character
literals.[27]
C source files contain declarations and function definitions. Function definitions, in
turn, contain declarations and statements. Declarations either define new types
using keywords such as  struct ,  union , and  enum , or assign types to and perhaps
reserve storage for new variables, usually by writing the type followed by the variable
name. Keywords such as  char  and  int  specify built-in types. Sections of code are
enclosed in braces ( {  and  } , sometimes called "curly brackets") to limit the scope of
declarations and to act as a single statement for control structures.
As an imperative language, C uses statements to specify actions. The most common
statement is an expression statement, consisting of an expression to be evaluated,
followed by a semicolon; as a side effect of the evaluation, functions may
be called and variables may be assigned new values. To modify the normal
sequential execution of statements, C provides several control-flow statements
identified by reserved keywords. Structured programming is supported by  if  ...
[ else ] conditional execution and by  do  ...  while ,  while , and  for  iterative execution
(looping). The  for  statement has separate initialization, testing, and reinitialization
expressions, any or all of which can be omitted.  break  and  continue  can be used to
leave the innermost enclosing loop statement or skip to its reinitialization. There is
also a non-structured  goto  statement which branches directly to the
designated label within the function.  switch  selects a  case  to be executed based on
the value of an integer expression. Different from many other languages, control-flow
will fall through to the next  case  unless terminated by a  break .
Expressions can use a variety of built-in operators and may contain function calls.
The order in which arguments to functions and operands to most operators are
evaluated is unspecified. The evaluations may even be interleaved. However, all
side effects (including storage to variables) will occur before the next "sequence
point"; sequence points include the end of each expression statement, and the entry
to and return from each function call. Sequence points also occur during evaluation
of expressions containing certain operators ( && ,  || ,  ?:  and the comma operator).
This permits a high degree of object code optimization by the compiler, but requires
C programmers to take more care to obtain reliable results than is needed for other
programming languages.
Kernighan and Ritchie say in the Introduction of The C Programming Language: "C,
like any other language, has its blemishes. Some of the operators have the wrong
precedence; some parts of the syntax could be better." [28] The C standard did not
attempt to correct many of these blemishes, because of the impact of such changes
on already existing software.
Character set[edit]
The basic C source character set includes the following characters:

 Lowercase and uppercase letters of ISO Basic Latin Alphabet:  a – z   A – Z

 Decimal digits:  0 – 9
 Graphic characters:  ! " # % & ' ( ) * + , - . / : ; < = > ? [ \ ] ^ _ { |
} ~
 Whitespace characters: space, horizontal tab, vertical tab, form feed, newline
Newline indicates the end of a text line; it need not correspond to an actual single
character, although for convenience C treats it as one.
Additional multi-byte encoded characters may be used in string literals, but they are
not entirely portable. The latest C standard (C11) allows multi-
national Unicode characters to be embedded portably within C source text by
using  \uXXXX  or  \UXXXXXXXX  encoding (where the  X  denotes a hexadecimal
character), although this feature is not yet widely implemented.
The basic C execution character set contains the same characters, along with
representations for alert, backspace, and carriage return. Run-time support for
extended character sets has increased with each revision of the C standard.
Reserved words[edit]
C89 has 32 reserved words, also known as keywords, which are the words that
cannot be used for any purposes other than those for which they are predefined:

 auto
 break
 case
 char
 const
 continue
 default
 do
 double
 else
 enum
 extern
 float
 for
 goto
 if
 int
 long
 register
 return
 short
 signed
 sizeof
 static
 struct
 switch
 typedef
 union
 unsigned
 void
 volatile
 while

C99 reserved five more words:

 _Bool
 _Complex
 _Imaginary
 inline
 restrict

C11 reserved seven more words:[29]

 _Alignas
 _Alignof
 _Atomic
 _Generic
 _Noreturn
 _Static_assert
 _Thread_local

Most of the recently reserved words begin with an underscore followed by a capital
letter, because identifiers of that form were previously reserved by the C standard for
use only by implementations. Since existing program source code should not have
been using these identifiers, it would not be affected when C implementations started
supporting these extensions to the programming language. Some standard headers
do define more convenient synonyms for underscored identifiers. The language
previously included a reserved word called  entry , but this was seldom implemented,
and has now[when?] been removed as a reserved word.[30]
Operators[edit]
Main article: Operators in C and C++
C supports a rich set of operators, which are symbols used within an expression to
specify the manipulations to be performed while evaluating that expression. C has
operators for:

 arithmetic:  + ,  - ,  * ,  / ,  %
 assignment:  =
 augmented assignment:  += ,  -= ,  *= ,  /= ,  %= ,  &= ,  |= ,  ^= ,  <<= ,  >>=
 bitwise logic:  ~ ,  & ,  | ,  ^
 bitwise shifts:  << ,  >>
 boolean logic:  ! ,  && ,  ||
 conditional evaluation:  ? :
 equality testing:  == ,  !=
 calling functions:  ( )
 increment and decrement:  ++ ,  --
 member selection:  . ,  ->
 object size:  sizeof
 order relations:  < ,  <= ,  > ,  >=
 reference and dereference:  & ,  * ,  [ ]
 sequencing:  ,
 subexpression grouping:  ( )
 type conversion:  (typename)
C uses the operator  =  (used in mathematics to express equality) to indicate
assignment, following the precedent of Fortran and PL/I, but unlike ALGOL and its
derivatives. C uses the operator  ==  to test for equality. The similarity between these
two operators (assignment and equality) may result in the accidental use of one in
place of the other, and in many cases, the mistake does not produce an error
message (although some compilers produce warnings). For example, the conditional
expression  if (a == b + 1)  might mistakenly be written as  if (a = b + 1) , which
will be evaluated as true if  a  is not zero after the assignment.[31]
The C operator precedence is not always intuitive. For example, the
operator  ==  binds more tightly than (is executed prior to) the operators  &  (bitwise
AND) and  |  (bitwise OR) in expressions such as  x & 1 == 0 , which must be written
as  (x & 1) == 0  if that is the coder's intent.[32]

"Hello, world" example[edit]

"Hello, World!" program by Brian Kernighan (1978)

See also: Hello, world

The "hello, world" example, which appeared in the first edition of K&R, has become
the model for an introductory program in most programming textbooks. The program
prints "hello, world" to the standard output, which is usually a terminal or screen
display.
The original version was:[33]

main()
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}

A standard-conforming "hello, world" program is: [a]

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
printf("hello, world\n");
}

The first line of the program contains a preprocessing directive, indicated

by  #include . This causes the compiler to replace that line with the entire text of
the  stdio.h  standard header, which contains declarations for standard input and
output functions such as  printf  and  scanf . The angle brackets
surrounding  stdio.h  indicate that  stdio.h  can be located using a search strategy
that prefers headers provided with the compiler to other headers having the same
name, as opposed to double quotes which typically include local or project-specific
header files.
The next line indicates that a function named  main  is being defined.
The  main  function serves a special purpose in C programs; the run-time
environment calls the  main  function to begin program execution. The type
specifier  int  indicates that the value that is returned to the invoker (in this case the
run-time environment) as a result of evaluating the  main  function, is an integer. The
keyword  void  as a parameter list indicates that this function takes no arguments. [b]
The opening curly brace indicates the beginning of the definition of
the  main  function.
The next line calls (diverts execution to) a function named  printf , which in this case
is supplied from a system library. In this call, the  printf  function is passed (provided
with) a single argument, the address of the first character in the string literal  "hello,
world\n" . The string literal is an unnamed array with elements of type  char , set up
automatically by the compiler with a final 0-valued character to mark the end of the
array ( printf  needs to know this). The  \n  is an escape sequence that C translates
to a newline character, which on output signifies the end of the current line. The
return value of the  printf  function is of type  int , but it is silently discarded since it
is not used. (A more careful program might test the return value to determine
whether or not the  printf  function succeeded.) The semicolon  ;  terminates the
statement.
The closing curly brace indicates the end of the code for the  main  function.
According to the C99 specification and newer, the  main  function, unlike any other
function, will implicitly return a value of  0  upon reaching the  }  that terminates the
function. (Formerly an explicit  return 0;  statement was required.) This is
interpreted by the run-time system as an exit code indicating successful execution. [34]

Data types[edit]
Main article: C variable types and declarations
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve
this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (October 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this
template message)
The type system in C is static and weakly typed, which makes it similar to the type
system of ALGOL descendants such as Pascal.[35] There are built-in types for integers
of various sizes, both signed and unsigned, floating-point numbers, and enumerated
types ( enum ). Integer type  char  is often used for single-byte characters. C99 added
a boolean datatype. There are also derived types
including arrays, pointers, records ( struct ), and unions ( union ).
C is often used in low-level systems programming where escapes from the type
system may be necessary. The compiler attempts to ensure type correctness of
most expressions, but the programmer can override the checks in various ways,
either by using a type cast to explicitly convert a value from one type to another, or
by using pointers or unions to reinterpret the underlying bits of a data object in some
other way.
Some find C's declaration syntax unintuitive, particularly for function pointers.
(Ritchie's idea was to declare identifiers in contexts resembling their use:
"declaration reflects use".)[36]
C's usual arithmetic conversions allow for efficient code to be generated, but can
sometimes produce unexpected results. For example, a comparison of signed and
unsigned integers of equal width requires a conversion of the signed value to
unsigned. This can generate unexpected results if the signed value is negative.
Pointers[edit]
C supports the use of pointers, a type of reference that records the address or
location of an object or function in memory. Pointers can be dereferenced to access
data stored at the address pointed to, or to invoke a pointed-to function. Pointers can
be manipulated using assignment or pointer arithmetic. The run-time representation
of a pointer value is typically a raw memory address (perhaps augmented by an
offset-within-word field), but since a pointer's type includes the type of the thing
pointed to, expressions including pointers can be type-checked at compile time.
Pointer arithmetic is automatically scaled by the size of the pointed-to data type.
Pointers are used for many purposes in C. Text strings are commonly manipulated
using pointers into arrays of characters. Dynamic memory allocation is performed
using pointers; the result of a  malloc  is usually cast to the data type of the data to be
stored. Many data types, such as trees, are commonly implemented as dynamically
allocated  struct  objects linked together using pointers. Pointers to other pointers
are often used in multi-dimensional arrays and arrays of  struct  objects. Pointers to
functions (function pointers) are useful for passing functions as arguments to higher-
order functions (such as qsort or bsearch), in dispatch tables, or
as callbacks to event handlers .[34]
A null pointer value explicitly points to no valid location. Dereferencing a null pointer
value is undefined, often resulting in a segmentation fault. Null pointer values are
useful for indicating special cases such as no "next" pointer in the final node of
a linked list, or as an error indication from functions returning pointers. In appropriate
contexts in source code, such as for assigning to a pointer variable, a null pointer
constant can be written as  0 , with or without explicit casting to a pointer type, or as
the  NULL  macro defined by several standard headers. In conditional contexts, null
pointer values evaluate to false, while all other pointer values evaluate to true.
Void pointers ( void * ) point to objects of unspecified type, and can therefore be
used as "generic" data pointers. Since the size and type of the pointed-to object is
not known, void pointers cannot be dereferenced, nor is pointer arithmetic on them
allowed, although they can easily be (and in many contexts implicitly are) converted
to and from any other object pointer type. [34]
Careless use of pointers is potentially dangerous. Because they are typically
unchecked, a pointer variable can be made to point to any arbitrary location, which
can cause undesirable effects. Although properly used pointers point to safe places,
they can be made to point to unsafe places by using invalid pointer arithmetic; the
objects they point to may continue to be used after deallocation (dangling pointers);
they may be used without having been initialized (wild pointers); or they may be
directly assigned an unsafe value using a cast, union, or through another corrupt
pointer. In general, C is permissive in allowing manipulation of and conversion
between pointer types, although compilers typically provide options for various levels
of checking. Some other programming languages address these problems by using
more restrictive reference types.
Arrays[edit]
See also: C string
Array types in C are traditionally of a fixed, static size specified at compile time. The
more recent C99 standard also allows a form of variable-length arrays. However, it is
also possible to allocate a block of memory (of arbitrary size) at run-time, using the
standard library's  malloc  function, and treat it as an array.
Since arrays are always accessed (in effect) via pointers, array accesses are
typically not checked against the underlying array size, although some compilers
may provide bounds checking as an option.[37][38] Array bounds violations are therefore
possible and can lead to various repercussions, including illegal memory accesses,
corruption of data, buffer overruns, and run-time exceptions.
C does not have a special provision for declaring multi-dimensional arrays, but rather
relies on recursion within the type system to declare arrays of arrays, which
effectively accomplishes the same thing. The index values of the resulting "multi-
dimensional array" can be thought of as increasing in row-major order. Multi-
dimensional arrays are commonly used in numerical algorithms (mainly from
applied linear algebra) to store matrices. The structure of the C array is well suited to
this particular task. However, in early versions of C the bounds of the array must be
known fixed values or else explicitly passed to any subroutine that requires them,
and dynamically sized arrays of arrays cannot be accessed using double indexing.
(A workaround for this was to allocate the array with an additional "row vector" of
pointers to the columns.) C99 introduced "variable-length arrays" which address this
issue.
The following example using modern C (C99 or later) shows allocation of a two-
dimensional array on the heap and the use of multi-dimensional array indexing for
accesses (which can use bounds-checking on many C compilers):

int func(int N, int M)

{
float (*p)[N][M] = malloc(sizeof *p);
 if (!p)
return -1;
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
(*p)[i][j] = i + j;
print_array(N, M, p);
free(p);
return 1;
}

And here is a similar implementation using C99's Auto VLA feature:

int func(int N, int M)

{
// Caution: checks should be made to ensure N*M*sizeof(float) does NOT
exceed limitations for auto VLAs and is within available size of stack.
float p[N][M]; // auto VLA is held on the stack, and sized when the
function is invoked
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++)
for (int j = 0; j < M; j++)
p[i][j] = i + j;
// no need to free(p) since it will disappear when the function exits,
along with the rest of the stack frame
return 1;
}

Array–pointer interchangeability[edit]
The subscript notation  x[i]  (where  x  designates a pointer) is syntactic
sugar for  *(x+i) .[39] Taking advantage of the compiler's knowledge of the pointer
type, the address that  x + i  points to is not the base address (pointed to by  x )
incremented by  i  bytes, but rather is defined to be the base address incremented
by  i  multiplied by the size of an element that  x  points to. Thus,  x[i]  designates
the  i+1 th element of the array.
Furthermore, in most expression contexts (a notable exception is as operand
of  sizeof ), an expression of array type is automatically converted to a pointer to the
array's first element. This implies that an array is never copied as a whole when
named as an argument to a function, but rather only the address of its first element is
passed. Therefore, although function calls in C use pass-by-value semantics, arrays
are in effect passed by reference.
The total size of an array  x  can be determined by applying  sizeof  to an expression
of array type. The size of an element can be determined by applying the
operator  sizeof  to any dereferenced element of an array  A , as in  n = sizeof A[0] .
Thus, the number of elements in a declared array  A  can be determined as  sizeof A
/ sizeof A[0] . Note, that if only a pointer to the first element is available as it is
often the case in C code because of the automatic conversion described above, the
information about the full type of the array and its length are lost.

Memory management[edit]
One of the most important functions of a programming language is to provide
facilities for managing memory and the objects that are stored in memory. C
provides three princ