Programming World


Overview of C language

    C is world most popular programming language. Unix os is developed in 'C' language. Oracle is wriiten in'C'. MY-SQL is written in 'C'. Almost every device driver is wriiten in C. Major part of web browser is wriiten in C.

History of C language

C programming language was developed in 1972 by Denis.M.Ritchie at Bell laborateries of AT and TS(american telegraph and tele-communications)located in USA.

Denis Ritchie is known as the founder of C language.

It was developed to overcome problems of previous such as B,BCPL,(basic combined programming language)etc.

Initially ,c language was developed to be used in UNIX OS which inherits many features to previous language such as B and BCPL.

Defination of C :

C is a mid-level,structure,procedure oriented,platform-independent programming language.


Language Year Developed by
ALGOL 1960 internation group
BCPL 1966 Martin Richard
B 1969 Ken Thompson
Tradition c 1972 Dennis Ritchie
K and RC 1978 Kernighan and Ritchie
ANSIC 1989 ANSI comittee
ANSI/ISOC 1990 ISO comittee

Data types in C








Sr.no Data type Meaning Range Size in bytes Format specifier Declaration/example
1 Integer
short signed int A number without decimal point -32768 to +32767 2 %d int a;

short unsigned int A number without sign 0 to65535 2 %u short unsigned int a; or unsigned int a; or unsigned a;

Long signed int A number without decimal point -214783648 to +2147483647 4 %Ld long int a;

Long unsigned int A number without int 0 to 4294967295 4 %Lu long unsigned int a;

2 character
signed char single digit, alphabate,symbol enclosed within single quote -128 to +127 1 %c char div;

unsigned char single digit, alphabate,symbol enclosed within single quote 0 to +255 1 %c char div;

3 Real
float number with decimal point -3.4 e38 to +3.4e38 4 %f float a;

double number with decimal point -1.7 e308 to 1.7e308 8 %f double a;

long double number with decimal point -1.7 e4932 to +1.7e4932 10 %f long double a;