Outline of the C programming language

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to C:

C is a general-purpose, procedural, compiled, and statically typed programming language. It was created by Dennis Ritchie in 1972 at Bell Labs as a successor to the B language.

What type of language is C?

C can be described as all of the following:

• Programming language — artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer.
• Compiled language — language implemented through compilers rather than interpreters
• Procedural programming language — programming paradigm based on the concept of procedure calls
• General-purpose programming language — designed for writing software in a wide variety of application domains
• Statically typed programming language — type checking is performed at compile-time

History of C

• B programming language — precursor to C
• K&R C — early version described by Kernighan and Ritchie
• ANSI C / ISO C standards:
  • C89/C90
  • C99
  • C11
  • C17
  • C23 — current standard

General C concepts

See also: C syntax

• Callback
• Control flow
• Pointers
• Dynamic memory allocation
• Data types
• Enumeration
• File input/output
• Functions
• Header files
• Memory management
• Operators
• Preprocessor directives
• Recursion
• Standard streams
• Static variables
• String handling
• Structs
• Type conversion
• Undefined behavior
• Unions
• Variables

Issues / Limitations

• Constructs that behave differently in C and C++
• Cyber security
• Undefined behavior

C Toolchain

See also: List of C software and tools

C compilers

See also: List of C compilers

• GCC — GNU Compiler Collection
• Clang — LLVM C compiler
• MSVC — Microsoft Visual C++ compiler (supports C)
• TinyCC
• Turbo C

C libraries

See also: List of open-source code libraries

C Standard Library

Main article: C standard library

The C standard library provides fundamental routines for:

• Input/output (stdio.h)
• String handling (string.h)
• Mathematical computations (math.h)
• Memory management (stdlib.h)
• Time and date (time.h)

Other notable libraries

• GLib
• SDL
• GSL
• libcurl
• OpenSSL

Notable projects written in C

• CPython — the reference implementation of the Python programming language
• Git — version control system
• Linux kernel, Bash, Coreutils, Autoconf and other command line utilities
• Lua, PHP, Perl — Scripting languages
• PostgreSQL — relational database systems
• Redis — in-memory database
• SQLite — embedded SQL database engine
• Unix — originally rewritten in C at Bell Labs
• Vim
• GNOME, MATE and Xfce — desktop environments
• X window system and Wayland — windowing systems
• Apache HTTP Server and nginx — Web servers
• cURL — command line web client and library
• HAProxy — multiprotocol load balancer and reverse proxy
• OpenSSH
• OpenSSL
• OpenLDAP

Example source code

• Articles with example C code

C publications

Books about C

• Andrew Koenig – C Traps and Pitfalls
• Brian W. Kernighan – The C Programming Language
• Guy L. Steele Jr. – C: A Reference Manual
• Herbert Schildt – C, The Complete Reference
• Peter van der Linden – Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets

Magazines about C

• C/C++ Users Journal — (historical publication)

C programmers

• John Carmack – game programmer, known for Doom and Quake.
• Brian Kernighan — wrote The C Programming Language book
• Rob Pike – worked on Unix and Plan 9, contributed to C and its ecosystem.
• Dennis Ritchie — created the C programming language
• Richard Stallman – founder of the GNU Project
• Tim Sweeney – founder of Epic Games and creator of Unreal Engine
• Ken Thompson — Unix
• Linus Torvalds — Linux

C dialects

• Cyclone — safe variant
• Embedded C
• GNU C — features specific to GCC
• K&R C
• Microsoft C — Microsoft-specific extensions
• Objective-C — object-oriented extension of C

C learning resources

See also: List of online integrated development environments

• Codecademy – interactive C programming lessons
• GeeksforGeeks – tutorials, coding examples, and interactive programming for C concepts and data structures
• Learn-C.org – free interactive C tutorial for beginners
• CProgramming.com Tutorial – tutorials, examples, and best practices for learning C
• W3Schools – beginner-friendly C tutorials
• Wikibooks C Programming – free open-content textbook

Competitive programming

• Codeforces – an online platform for programming contests that supports C submissions
• Codewars – gamified coding challenges
• HackerRank – competitive programming and interview preparation site with C challenges
• LeetCode – online judge and problem-solving platform

See also

• Compatibility of C and C++
• List of software programming journals
• List of C-family programming languages
• Outline of computer programming
• Outline of software
• Outline of software engineering

Outlines of other programming languages

• Outline of the C sharp programming language
• Outline of the C++ programming language
• Outline of the Java programming language
• Outline of the JavaScript programming language
• Outline of the Perl programming language
• Outline of the Python programming language
• Outline of the Rust programming language

External links

• ISO C standard information
• C reference on cppreference.com