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Also known as: ANSI Standard C

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C, computer programming language developed in the early 1970s by American computer scientist Dennis M. Ritchie at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories). C was designed as a minimalist language to be used in writing operating systems for minicomputers, such as the DEC PDP 7, which had very limited memories compared with the mainframe computers of the period. The language was devised during 1969–73, alongside the early development of the UNIX operating system. It was based on CPL (Combined Programming Language), which had been first condensed into the B programming language—a stripped-down computer programming language—created in 1969–70 by Ken Thompson, an American computer scientist and a colleague of Ritchie. Ritchie subsequently rewrote and restored features from CPL to create C and eventually rewrote the UNIX operating system in the new language.

As the UNIX system was enhanced, a series of changes took place in C between 1977 and 1979. During this time a description of the language became widely available through a book, The C Programming Language (1978), by Brian W. Kernighan and Ritchie. In the mid-1980s it became important to establish an official standard for C, since it was being used in projects subject to commercial and government contracts. In 1983 the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) set up a committee that further amended and standardized the language. Since then C has been referred to as ANSI Standard C, and it remains popular in the world of UNIX-like operating systems. C also became one of the most common programming languages used for writing other system software and applications. Descendants of C include Concurrent C, Objective C, C*, C#, and the widely used C++. The programming language Java was introduced in 1994 as a simplified subset of C for deployment over the Internet and for use in portable devices with limited memory or limited processing capabilities.

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Erik Gregersen.

C has been around for quite some time and it is one of the foundational languages of computer science. Most operating systems today, including the Linux Kernel, are implemented with C code. The main version of the Python programming language is named CPython because it is implemented using C. The C programming language is everywhere, learning it will help you become a better programmer ready for the next challenge in any field of computer science!

C is a powerful mid to low-level compiled programming language used in operating systems, as the base for higher level languages like C++ and Python, and in high-performance applications. It excels in speed and performance giving the programmer great control over the system.

The C language was created by Dennis Ritchie in Bell Labs in the 1970s. It was designed to be a system implementation language for the nascent Unix operating system.

Whether you are an experienced programmer or not, this website is intended for everyone who wishes to learn the C programming language.

There is no need to download anything - Just click on the chapter you wish to begin from, and follow the instructions. Good luck!

learn-c.org is still under construction - If you wish to contribute tutorials, please click on Contributing Tutorials down below.

The default method combines its arguments to form a vector. All arguments are coerced to a common type which is the type of the returned value, and all attributes except names are removed.

Usage

S3 Generic function

c(…)

S3 method for default

c(…, recursive = FALSE, use.names = TRUE)

Arguments

…

objects to be concatenated.

recursive

logical. If recursive = TRUE, the function recursively descends through lists (and pairlists) combining all their elements into a vector.

use.names

logical indicating if names should be preserved.

Value

NULL or an expression or a vector of an appropriate mode. (With no arguments the value is NULL.)

S4 methods

This function is S4 generic, but with argument list`(x, ...)`.

Details

The output type is determined from the highest type of the components in the hierarchy NULL < raw < logical < integer < double < complex < character < list < expression. Pairlists are treated as lists, whereas non-vector components (such names and calls) are treated as one-element lists which cannot be unlisted even if recursive = TRUE.

Note that `factor`s are treated only via their internal

c.factor <- function(..., recursive=TRUE) unlist(list(...), recursive=recursive)

0 codes; one proposal has been to use

c.factor <- function(..., recursive=TRUE) unlist(list(...), recursive=recursive)

if factor concatenation by

c.factor <- function(..., recursive=TRUE) unlist(list(...), recursive=recursive)

1 should give a factor.

c.factor <- function(..., recursive=TRUE) unlist(list(...), recursive=recursive)

3 is sometimes used for its side effect of removing attributes except names, for example to turn an array into a vector.

c.factor <- function(..., recursive=TRUE) unlist(list(...), recursive=recursive)

4 is a more intuitive way to do this, but also drops names. Note that methods other than the default are not required to do this (and they will almost certainly preserve a class attribute).

This is a primitive function.

References

Becker, R. A., Chambers, J. M. and Wilks, A. R. (1988) The New S Language. Wadsworth & Brooks/Cole.

What is C++ good for?

What is C plus-plus used for? Over time, C++ has become a choice language for building fast and reliable software. Its versatility makes it an excellent match for complex applications, embedded systems, and internet of things (IoT) devices.

What is C meant for?

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.

Who made C language?

Dennis Ritchie

Is C and C++ same?

C is a structural or procedural programming language that was used for system applications and low-level programming applications. Whereas C++ is an object-oriented programming language having some additional features like Encapsulation, Data Hiding, Data Abstraction, Inheritance, Polymorphism, etc.