History of C LANGUAGE ?

1. WHAT IS C-LANGUAGE ?

C-language is a structure/procedural oriented , middle level  programming language developed at Bell laboratories in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie. It was mainly developed as a system programming language to write an operating system. The first time it was used on a Digital Equipment Corporation computer called PDP – 11 in 1972. 

C language was invented for implementing UNIX operating system.

In 1978,Denis Ritchie and Brian  Kernighan publish the first edition "The C Programming Language".

C-language is an ANSI/ISO standard and powerful programming language for developing real time applications.

2  WHO DEVELOPED C LANGAUGE ?

C programming language was developed at Bell Laboratories in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie.

3  HISTORY OF C LANGAUGE ?

• C programming language is a structural oriented programming language, was developed at Bell Laboratories in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie . c languages features were derived from earlier language called "B" (Basic combined Programming Language- BCPL). which was derived from ALGOL. Similarly, BCPL influenced development of programming language called B by Ken Thompson in 1970.
• The history of C language goes back to 1960’s, when a number of computer languages were being used for various purposes. COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language) was being used for commercial purposes, FORTRAN (Formula Translation) was being used for scientific and engineering applications and so on. 
• Many of the ideas of structure of C language were taken from BCPL and B. Ritchie has given an excellent exposition of the problems experienced during development of C in his lecture entitled “The Development of the C Language”. Although  C  was  designed  for  implementing  system  software,  it  is  also  widely used  for  developing  portable  application  software.  

• The earlier C was also called B with types though many ideas were also borrowed from ALGOL 68. A second phase of developments in C came in during the years 1977-1979. C became popular because of the success of UNIX system which was largely written in C and which could be used on different types of computers. C is a structured high-level language. Programs written in C are easy to write and debug as well as portable. The programs written in C are quite efficient. However, the code written in C language needs a compiler to convert different instructions and data into machine language.
• In 1978, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan published the  first edition ,"The C Programming language" and commonly known as k& R C;
• In 1983, the American National Standard Institute (ANSI) established a committee to provide a modern , comprehensive definition of C, The resulting definition , the ANSI standard , or ANSI C" was completed late 1988.

     

           

ALGOL 60	1960	International Committee	Too general, too abstract
CPL	1963	Cambridge University	Hard to learn, difficult to implement
BCPL	1967	Martin Richards, Cambridge University	Too specific
B	1970	Ken Thompson, Bell Labs	Too specific
C	1972	Dennis Ritchie, Bell Labs	Features of BCPL and B, not general, not specific, and most powerful

C's compactness and coherence is mainly due to the fact that it is one-man language. Mainly C was developed to write the UNIX operating system.