C programming is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis M. Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories to develop the UNIX operating system. C is the most widely used computer language. It keeps fluctuating at number one scale of popularity along with Java programming language, which is also equally popular and most widely used among modern software programmers. Show
C programming language is a MUST for students and working professionals to become a great Software Engineer specially when they are working in Software Development Domain. I will list down some of the key advantages of learning C Programming:
Just to give you a little excitement about C programming, I'm going to give you a small conventional C Programming Hello World program, You can try it using Demo link. #include
int main() {
/* my first program in C */
printf("Hello, World! \n");
return 0;
}
C was initially used for system development work, particularly the programs that make-up the operating system. C was adopted as a system development language because it produces code that runs nearly as fast as the code written in assembly language. Some examples of the use of C are -
This tutorial is designed for software programmers with a need to understand the C programming language starting from scratch. This C tutorial will give you enough understanding on C programming language from where you can take yourself to higher level of expertise. Before proceeding with this tutorial, you should have a basic understanding of Computer Programming terminologies. A basic understanding of any of the programming languages will help you in understanding the C programming concepts and move fast on the learning track. C is a powerful general-purpose programming language. It can be used to develop software like operating systems, databases, compilers, and so on. C programming is an excellent language to learn to program for beginners. Our C tutorials will guide you to learn C programming one step at a time. Don't know how to learn C Programming, the right way? Enroll in our Interactive C Course for FREE. C is a procedural programming language initially developed by Dennis Ritchie in the year 1972 at Bell Laboratories of AT&T Labs. It was mainly developed as a system programming language to write the UNIX operating system. The main features of the C language include:
These features make the C language suitable for system programmings like an operating system or compiler development. Why Should We Learn C?Many later languages have borrowed syntax/features directly or indirectly from the C language. Like syntax of Java, PHP, JavaScript, and many other languages are mainly based on the C language. C++ is nearly a superset of C language (Only a few programs may compile in C, but not in C++). So, if a person learns C programming first, it will help him to learn any modern programming language as well. As learning C help to understand a lot of the underlying architecture of the operating system. Like pointers, working with memory locations, etc. Beginning with C programming:Writing the First Program in CThe following code is one of the simplest C programs that will help us the basic syntax structure of a C program. Example: C
Output 10 Let us analyze the structure of our program line by line. Structure of the C programAfter the above discussion, we can formally assess the structure of a C program. By structure, it is meant that any program can be written in this structure only. Writing a C program in any other structure will hence lead to a Compilation Error. The structure of a C program is as follows: 
Components of a C Program:1. Header Files Inclusion – Line 1 [#include <stdio.h>]The first and foremost component is the inclusion of the Header files in a C program. A header file is a file with extension .h which contains C function declarations and macro definitions to be shared between several source files. All lines that start with # are processed by a preprocessor which is a program invoked by the compiler. In the above example, the preprocessor copies the preprocessed code of stdio.h to our file. The .h files are called header files in C.
2. Main Method Declaration – Line 2 [int main()]The next part of a C program is to declare the main() function. It is the entry point of a C program and the execution typically begins with the first line of the main(). The empty brackets indicate that the main doesn’t take any parameter (See this for more details). The int that was written before the main indicates the return type of main(). The value returned by the main indicates the status of program termination. See this post for more details on the return type. 3. Body of Main Method – Line 3 to Line 6 [enclosed in {}]The body of a function in the C program refers to statements that are a part of that function. It can be anything like manipulations, searching, sorting, printing, etc. A pair of curly brackets define the body of a function. All functions must start and end with curly brackets. 4. Statement – Line 4 [printf(“Hello World”);]Statements are the instructions given to the compiler. In C, a statement is always terminated by a semicolon (;). In this particular case, we use printf() function to instruct the compiler to display “Hello World” text on the screen. 5. Return Statement – Line 5 [return 0;]The last part of any C function is the return statement. The return statement refers to the return values from a function. This return statement and return value depend upon the return type of the function. The return statement in our program returns the value from main(). The returned value may be used by an operating system to know the termination status of your program. The value 0 typically means successful termination. How to Execute the Above Program?In order to execute the above program, we need to first compile it using a compiler and then we can run the generated executable. There are online IDEs available for free like GeeksforGeeksIDE, that can be used to start development in C without installing a compiler.
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