Introduction of C

C is a general-purpose programming language. It has been closely associated with the UNIX operating system where it was developed, since both the system and most of the programs that run on it are written in C. The language, however, is not tied to any one operating system or machine; and although it has been called a ``system programming language'' because it is useful for writing compilers and operating systems, it has been used equally well to write major programs in many different domains.
Many of the important ideas of C stem from the language BCPL, developed by Martin Richards. The influence of BCPL on C proceeded indirectly through the language B, which was written by Ken Thompson in 1970 for the first UNIX system on the DEC PDP-7.
BCPL and B are ``typeless'' languages. By contrast, C provides a variety of data types. The fundamental types are characters, and integers and floating point numbers of several sizes. In addition, there is a hierarchy of derived data types created with pointers, arrays, structures and unions. Expressions are formed from operators and operands; any expression, including an assignment or a function call, can be a statement. Pointers provide for machine-independent address arithmetic.
C provides the fundamental control-flow constructions required for well-structured programs: statement grouping, decision making (if-else), selecting one of a set of possible values (switch), looping with the termination test at the top (while, for) or at the bottom (do), and early loop exit (break).
Functions may return values of basic types, structures, unions, or pointers. Any function may be called recursively. Local variables are typically ``automatic'', or created anew with each invocation. Function definitions may not be nested but variables may be declared in a block-structured fashion. The functions of a C program may exist in separate source files that are compiled separately. Variables may be internal to a function, external but known only within a single source file, or visible to the entire program.
A preprocessing step performs macro substitution on program text, inclusion of other source files, and conditional compilation.
C is a relatively ``low-level'' language. This characterization is not pejorative; it simply means that C deals with the same sort of objects that most computers do, namely characters, numbers, and addresses. These may be combined and moved about with the arithmetic and logical operators implemented by real machines.
C provides no operations to deal directly with composite objects such as character strings, sets, lists or arrays. There are no operations that manipulate an entire array or string, although structures may be copied as a unit. The language does not define any storage allocation facility other than static definition and the stack discipline provided by the local variables of functions; there is no heap or garbage collection. Finally, C itself provides no input/output facilities; there are no READ or WRITE statements, and no built-in file access methods. All of these higher-level mechanisms must be provided by explicitly called functions. Most C implementations have included a reasonably standard collection of such functions.
Similarly, C offers only straightforward, single-thread control flow: tests, loops, grouping, and subprograms, but not multiprogramming, parallel operations, synchronization, or coroutines.
Although the absence of some of these features may seem like a grave deficiency, (``You mean I have to call a function to compare two character strings?''), keeping the language down to modest size has real benefits. Since C is relatively small, it can be described in small space, and learned quickly. A programmer can reasonably expect to know and understand and indeed regularly use the entire language.
For many years, the definition of C was the reference manual in the first edition of The C Programming Language. In 1983, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) established a committee to provide a modern, comprehensive definition of C. The resulting definition, the ANSI standard, or ``ANSI C'', was completed in late 1988. Most of the features of the standard are already supported by modern compilers.
The standard is based on the original reference manual. The language is relatively little changed; one of the goals of the standard was to make sure that most existing programs would remain valid, or, failing that, that compilers could produce warnings of new behavior.
For most programmers, the most important change is the new syntax for declaring and defining functions. A function declaration can now include a description of the arguments of the function; the definition syntax changes to match. This extra information makes it much easier for compilers to detect errors caused by mismatched arguments; in our experience, it is a very useful addition to the language.
There are other small-scale language changes. Structure assignment and enumerations, which had been widely available, are now officially part of the language. Floating-point computations may now be done in single precision. The properties of arithmetic, especially for unsigned types, are clarified. The preprocessor is more elaborate. Most of these changes will have only minor effects on most programmers.
A second significant contribution of the standard is the definition of a library to accompany C. It specifies functions for accessing the operating system (for instance, to read and write files), formatted input and output, memory allocation, string manipulation, and the like. A collection of standard headers provides uniform access to declarations of functions in data types. Programs that use this library to interact with a host system are assured of compatible behavior. Most of the library is closely modeled on the ``standard I/O library'' of the UNIX system. This library was described in the first edition, and has been widely used on other systems as well. Again, most programmers will not see much change.
Because the data types and control structures provided by C are supported directly by most computers, the run-time library required to implement self-contained programs is tiny. The standard library functions are only called explicitly, so they can be avoided if they are not needed. Most can be written in C, and except for the operating system details they conceal, are themselves portable.
Although C matches the capabilities of many computers, it is independent of any particular machine architecture. With a little care it is easy to write portable programs, that is, programs that can be run without change on a variety of hardware. The standard makes portability issues explicit, and prescribes a set of constants that characterize the machine on which the program is run.
C is not a strongly-typed language, but as it has evolved, its type-checking has been strengthened. The original definition of C frowned on, but permitted, the interchange of pointers and integers; this has long since been eliminated, and the standard now requires the proper declarations and explicit conversions that had already been enforced by good compilers. The new function declarations are another step in this direction. Compilers will warn of most type errors, and there is no automatic conversion of incompatible data types. Nevertheless, C retains the basic philosophy that programmers know what they are doing; it only requires that they state their intentions explicitly.
C, like any other language, has its blemishes. Some of the operators have the wrong precedence; some parts of the syntax could be better. Nonetheless, C has proven to ben an extremely effective and expressive language for a wide variety of programming applications.
The book is organized as follows. Chapter 1 is a tutorial on the central part of C. The purpose is to get the reader started as quickly as possible, since we believe strongly that the way to learn a new language is to write programs in it. The tutorial does assume a working knowledge of the basic elements of
programming; there is no explanation of computers, of compilation, nor of the meaning of an expression like n=n+1. Although we have tried where possible to show useful programming techniques, the book is not intended to be a reference work on data structures and algorithms; when forced to make a choice, we have concentrated on the language.
Chapters 2 through 6 discuss various aspects of C in more detail, and rather more formally, than does Chapter 1, although the emphasis is still on examples of complete programs, rather than isolated fragments. Chapter 2 deals with the basic data types, operators and expressions. Chapter 3 threats control flow: if-else, switch, while, for, etc. Chapter 4 covers functions and program structure - external variables, scope rules, multiple source files, and so on - and also touches on the preprocessor.
Chapter 5 discusses pointers and address arithmetic. Chapter 6 covers structures and unions.
Chapter 7 describes the standard library, which provides a common interface to the operating system. This library is defined by the ANSI standard and is meant to be supported on all machines that support C, so programs that use it for input, output, and other operating system access can be moved from one system to another without change.
Chapter 8 describes an interface between C programs and the UNIX operating system, concentrating on input/output, the file system, and storage allocation. Although some of this chapter is specific to UNIX systems, programmers who use other systems should still find useful material here, including some insight into how one version of the standard library is implemented, and suggestions on portability.
Appendix A contains a language reference manual. The official statement of the syntax and semantics of the C language is the ANSI standard itself. That document, however, is intended foremost for compiler writers. The reference manual here conveys the definition of the language more concisely and without the same legalistic style. Appendix B is a summary of the standard library, again for users rather than implementers. Appendix C is a short summary of changes from the original language. In cases of doubt, however, the standard and one's own compiler remain the final authorities on the language.