CSC 272 - Software II: Principles of Programming Languages

DR. R. M. Siegfried

The C Programming Language

C is a middle-level language, with loose data typing that was designed by Dennis Ritchie in 1967 for use in redesigning the UNIX Operating System. C is powerful enough that you can do anything in it other than load specific values into specific registers. It was the basis for the C++ language and remains somewhat popular despite the strong push into object-oriented programming.

C was heavily influenced by PL/I and ALGOL and in turn also influenced Java. You will find below links to three examples which show you how to code basic constructs in C:

• disfile.c - A program to display a text file on the screen
• writefile.c - A program to create a text file from console input
• bubsort.c - A program to sort an array of integers
• iotest.c - A program that reads an array of integers from a file

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