The C programming language is a high-level

programming language. It is one of the most

popular computer languages today because it is a
structured, machine independent language.
• C was evolved by Dennis Ritchie from ALGOL, BCPL, and B at the
Bell Laboratories in 1972.
• Since it was developed along with the UNIX operating system, it is
strongly associated with UNIX. This OS was coded almost entirely in
C.
• The language gained popularity after publication of the book ‘The C
Programming Language’ by Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kerningham in
1978.
• The rapid growth of the language led to different versions of the
language which were similar but incompatible. To assure the
standardization of C, American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
appointed a technical committee to define a standard for C in 1983.
• The committee approved version of C was released in 1989 and was
known as ANSI C.
• It has since been approved by the International Standards Organisation
(ISO) in 1990. This version was referred to as C89.
1. Creating the program;
2. Compiling the program;
3. Linking the program with functions that are need
from the C library;
4. Executing the program.

A programming language is designed to help process certain

kinds of data consisting of numbers, characters and
strings to provide output known as information. The
processing of data is accomplished by executing a
sequence of precise instructions called a program. These
instructions are formed using certain symbols and words
according to rules known as syntax rules (or grammar).
 TYPES CHARACTER SET
Lowercase letters a-z

Uppercase letters A-Z

Digits 0-9

Special Characters ,.&;:?!”*[]()# etc.

Blank space, Horizontal tab,
White spaces Carriage return, New line, Form
feed
• The smallest individual units are known as C
tokens.
• C has six types of tokens:

1. Keywords Ex: float, while

2. Identifiers Ex: main, amount
3. Constants Ex: -15.5, 100
4. Strings Ex: “hello”, “year”
5. Special symbols Ex: [], {}
6. Operators Ex: + - * ,
• All keywords have fixed
meanings and these
meanings can’t be
changed.
• All keywords must be
written in lowercase.
• The types of keywords
include auto (ex: char,
continue), double (ex: else,
float, if), int (ex: long,
short, signed), struct (ex:
switch, unsigned, while).
• Identifiers refer to the
names of variables,
functions and arrays.
• These are user-defined
names and consist of a
sequence of letters and
digits, with a letter as a
first character.
• Both uppercase and
lowercase letters are
permitted.
 CONSTANTS:
Fixed values that
do not change
during execution

NUMERIC CHARACTER

Real: Nos. Single: String:

Integer: A single Sequence of
containing character
A sequence fractional characters
of digits enclosed enclosed in
parts within single double quotes
quote marks
• An expression represents a single data item -
usually a number.
• The symbols which are used to perform logical
and mathematical operations in a C program
are called C operators.
• The expression may consist of a single entity,
such as a constant or variable, or it may consist
of some combination of such entities,
interconnected by one or more operators.
• In looping, a sequence of statements are
executed until some conditions for termination
of the loop are satisfied.
• The C language provides for three constructs
for performing loop operations. They are:
1. The while statement
2. The do statement
3. The for statement
C is one of the most widely used programming
languages of all time, and C compilers are
available for the majority of available
computer architectures and operating systems.
It is rightfully called
“The Mother of All Computer Languages”.