The c# provides special methods known as _____methods to provide access to data members.

The c# provides special methods known as _____methods to provide access to data members.

C language Tutorial with programming approach for beginners and professionals, helps you to understand the C language tutorial easily. Our C tutorial explains each topic with programs.

The C Language is developed by Dennis Ritchie for creating system applications that directly interact with the hardware devices such as drivers, kernels, etc.

C programming is considered as the base for other programming languages, that is why it is known as mother language.

It can be defined by the following ways:

  1. Mother language
  2. System programming language
  3. Procedure-oriented programming language
  4. Structured programming language
  5. Mid-level programming language

1) C as a mother language

C language is considered as the mother language of all the modern programming languages because most of the compilers, JVMs, Kernels, etc. are written in C language, and most of the programming languages follow C syntax, for example, C++, Java, C#, etc.

It provides the core concepts like the array, strings, functions, file handling, etc. that are being used in many languages like C++, Java, C#, etc.


2) C as a system programming language

A system programming language is used to create system software. C language is a system programming language because it can be used to do low-level programming (for example driver and kernel). It is generally used to create hardware devices, OS, drivers, kernels, etc. For example, Linux kernel is written in C.

It can't be used for internet programming like Java, .Net, PHP, etc.


3) C as a procedural language

A procedure is known as a function, method, routine, subroutine, etc. A procedural language specifies a series of steps for the program to solve the problem.

A procedural language breaks the program into functions, data structures, etc.

C is a procedural language. In C, variables and function prototypes must be declared before being used.


4) C as a structured programming language

A structured programming language is a subset of the procedural language. Structure means to break a program into parts or blocks so that it may be easy to understand.

In the C language, we break the program into parts using functions. It makes the program easier to understand and modify.


5) C as a mid-level programming language

C is considered as a middle-level language because it supports the feature of both low-level and high-level languages. C language program is converted into assembly code, it supports pointer arithmetic (low-level), but it is machine independent (a feature of high-level).

A Low-level language is specific to one machine, i.e., machine dependent. It is machine dependent, fast to run. But it is not easy to understand.

A High-Level language is not specific to one machine, i.e., machine independent. It is easy to understand.


C Program

In this tutorial, all C programs are given with C compiler so that you can quickly change the C program code.

File: main.c

A detailed description of above program is given in next chapters.


C Programming Index



Prerequisite

Before learning C Programming, you must have the basic knowledge of Computer Fundamental.

Audience

Our C Programming tutorial is designed to help beginners and professionals.

Problem

We assure that you will not find any mistake in this C Language Tutorial. But if there is any mistake, please post the problem in the contact form.

Publications > The C Book

This is the online version of The C Book, second edition by Mike Banahan, Declan Brady and Mark Doran, originally published by Addison Wesley in 1991. This version is made freely available.

While this book is no longer in print, its content is still very relevant today. The C language is still popular, particularly for open source software and embedded programming. We hope this book will be useful, or at least interesting, to people who use C.

If you have any comments about this book, or if you find any bugs in its presentation, please send a message to .

Although we ourselves do not have the time and tools to prepare this book in PDF format, we are very grateful to Professor Carlos José de Almeida Pereira of the University Estadual de Santa Cruz in Brazil for his work which he modestly describes as 'simply printing your "printer friendly" pages to a PDF file'. The pdf file of the book that he has produced in this way was made available here on 6th March 2007 and currently should be the same as the contents of this site, no updates having been made since the single file was produced.

An alternative version in pdf was later submitted in July 2010 by Ward van Wanrooij (updated in 2018) - you can download his version here. We make no representations for the accuracy or otherwise of either pdf version.

  • Preface
    • About This Book
    • The Success of C
    • Standards
    • Hosted and Free-Standing Environments
    • Typographical conventions
    • Order of topics
    • Example programs
    • Deference to Higher Authority
    • Address for the Standard
  • Chapter 1. An Introduction to C
    • 1.1. The form of a C program
    • 1.2. Functions
    • 1.3. A description of Example 1.1
    • 1.4. Some more programs
    • 1.5. Terminology
    • 1.6. Summary
    • 1.7. Exercises
  • Chapter 2. Variables and Arithmetic
    • 2.1. Some fundamentals
    • 2.2. The alphabet of C
    • 2.3. The Textual Structure of Programs
    • 2.4. Keywords and identifiers
    • 2.5. Declaration of variables
    • 2.6. Real types
    • 2.7. Integral types
    • 2.8. Expressions and arithmetic
    • 2.9. Constants
    • 2.10. Summary
    • 2.11. Exercises
  • Chapter 3. Control of Flow and Logical Expressions
    • 3.1. The Task ahead
    • 3.2. Control of flow
    • 3.3. More logical expressions
    • 3.4. Strange operators
    • 3.5. Summary
    • 3.6. Exercises
  • Chapter 4. Functions
    • 4.1. Changes
    • 4.2. The type of functions
    • 4.3. Recursion and argument passing
    • 4.4. Linkage
    • 4.5. Summary
    • 4.6. Exercises
  • Chapter 5. Arrays and Pointers
    • 5.1. Opening shots
    • 5.2. Arrays
    • 5.3. Pointers
    • 5.4. Character handling
    • 5.5. Sizeof and storage allocation
    • 5.6. Pointers to functions
    • 5.7. Expressions involving pointers
    • 5.8. Arrays, the & operator and function declarations
    • 5.9. Summary
    • 5.10. Exercises
  • Chapter 6. Structured Data Types
    • 6.1. History
    • 6.2. Structures
    • 6.3. Unions
    • 6.4. Bitfields
    • 6.5. Enums
    • 6.6. Qualifiers and derived types
    • 6.7. Initialization
    • 6.8. Summary
    • 6.9. Exercises
  • Chapter 7. The Preprocessor
    • 7.1. Effect of the Standard
    • 7.2. How the preprocessor works
    • 7.3. Directives
    • 7.4. Summary
    • 7.5. Exercises
  • Chapter 8. Specialized Areas of C
    • 8.1. Government Health Warning
    • 8.2. Declarations, Definitions and Accessibility
    • 8.3. Typedef
    • 8.4. Const and volatile
    • 8.5. Sequence points
    • 8.6. Summary
  • Chapter 9. Libraries
    • 9.1. Introduction
    • 9.2. Diagnostics
    • 9.3. Character handling
    • 9.4. Localization
    • 9.5. Limits
    • 9.6. Mathematical functions
    • 9.7. Non-local jumps
    • 9.8. Signal handling
    • 9.9. Variable numbers of arguments
    • 9.10. Input and output
    • 9.11. Formatted I/O
    • 9.12. Character I/O
    • 9.13. Unformatted I/O
    • 9.14. Random access functions
    • 9.15. General Utilities
    • 9.16. String handling
    • 9.17. Date and time
    • 9.18. Summary
  • Chapter 10. Complete Programs in C
    • 10.1. Putting it all together
    • 10.2. Arguments to main
    • 10.3. Interpreting program arguments
    • 10.4. A pattern matching program
    • 10.5. A more ambitious example
    • 10.6. Afterword
  • Answers to Exercises
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
  • Copyright and disclaimer