C Language Introduction

C language Tutorial with programming approach for beginners and professionals, helps you to understand the C language tutorial easily. Our C tutorial explains each topic with programs.

The C Language is developed for creating system applications that direct interacts to the hardware devices such as drivers, kernals etc.

C programming is considered as the base for other programming languages, that is why it is known as mother language.

It can be defined by following ways:

1. Mother language
2. System programming language
3. Procedure-oriented programming language
4. Structured programming language
5. Mid level programming language

1) C as a mother language

C language is considered as the mother language of all the modern languages because most of the compilers, JVMs, Kernals etc. are written in C language and most of languages follows c syntax e.g. C++, Java etc.

It provides the core concepts like array, functions, file handling etc. that is being used in many languages like C++, java, C# etc.

2) C as a system programming language

A system programming language is used to create system softwares. C language is a system programming language because it can be used to do low level programming (e.g. driver and kernel). It is generally used to create hardware devices, OS, drivers, kernels etc. For example, linux kernel is written in C.

It can?t be used in internet programming like java, .net, php etc.

3) C as a procedural language

A procedure is known as function, method, routine, subroutine etc. A procedural language specifies a series of steps or procedures for the program to solve the problem.

A procedural language breaks the program into functions, data structures etc.

C is a procedural language. In C, variables and function prototypes must be declared before being used.

4) C as a structured programming language

A structured programming language is a subset of procedural language. Structure means to break a program into parts or blocks so that it may be easy to understand.

In C language, we break the program into parts using functions. It makes the program easier to understand and modify.

5) C as a mid-level programming language

C is considered as a middle level language because it supports the feature of both low-level and high level language. C language program is converted into assembly code, supports pointer arithmetic (low level), but it is machine independent (feature of high level).

Low level language is specific to one machine i.e. machine dependent. It is machine dependent, fast to run. But it is not easy to understand.

High Level language is not specific to one machine i.e. machine independent. It is easy to understand.

Prerequisite

Before learning C Programming, you must have the basic knowledge of Computer Fundamental.

Audience

Our C Programming tutorial is designed to help beginners and professionals.

Writing first program:
Following is first program in C

#include <stdio.h> int main(void) {     printf("cookthecode");     return 0; } Let us analyze the program line by line. Line 1: [ #include <stdio.h> ] In a C program, all lines that start with # are processed by preprocessor which is a program invoked by the compiler. In a very basic term, preprocessor takes a C program and produces another C program. The produced program has no lines starting with #, all such lines are processed by the preprocessor. In the above example, preprocessor copies the preprocessed code of stdio.h to our file. The .h files are called header files in C. These header files generally contain declaration of functions. We need stdio.h for the function printf() used in the program. Line 2 [ int main(void) ] There must to be starting point from where execution of compiled C program begins. In C, the execution typically begins with first line of main(). The void written in brackets indicates that the main doesn’t take any parameter. main() can be written to take parameters also. We will be covering that in future posts. The int written before main indicates return type of main(). The value returned by main indicates status of program termination. Line 3 and 6: [ { and } ] In C language, a pair of curly brackets define a scope and mainly used in functions and control statements like if, else, loops. All functions must start and end with curly brackets. Line 4 [ printf(“cookthecode”); ] printf() is a standard library function to print something on standard output. The semicolon at the end of printf indicates line termination. In C, semicolon is always used to indicate end of statement. Line 5 [ return 0; ] The return statement returns the value from main(). The returned value may be used by operating system to know termination status of your program. The value 0 typically means successful termination.