C Programming Language - Inroduction

C language possesses the powerful low-level features of second generation languages, like pointers, memory allocation, bit-manipulation, etc. It also supports conditional constructs, loop constructs, a rich list of operators and a variety of data structures as in third generation languages.

The combined features of second and third generation languages make C language a very powerful and flexible language. These features of C language make it possible to use the language for systems programming, like development of compilers, interpreters, operating systems, graphics and general utilities, and also for a host of applications in the commercial environment.

C language is so powerful and flexible that C compilers are being written in earlier versions of C language. Also, other language compilers, data bases, sepreadsheets, word processors, etc. are being developed in C language.

Out of a total of 13,000 lines of code for the Unix Operating system all except 800 lines have been written in C language.

C Programming Language - Block Structured Language - An Advantage for Modular Programming

The C functions available as part of the language work as building blocks to develop more functions. C languages offers all essentials of structured programming in terms of writing programs as logically-defined functions, functions returning values, functions keeping private variables, etc.

C language, as such, offers only a handful of functions which form the core of the language; rest of the functions available in libraries are developed using the core functions offered by the language as building blocks. This feature expands the scope and power of the language.

This leads to functionally cohesive modules and, therefore, re-usable code.

Thus, highly independent functions can be written and stored in a library containing other functions to be used as and when neccessary.