Programming Language is a set of instructions and keywords which help a user to communicate with the computer. The ‘C’ programming language was developed by Dennis Ritchie in Bell Telephone Laboratories, in the early 1970s. Ken Thompson and his team supported him in developing this language. In the late seventies, ‘C’ began to replace the more familiar languages of that time like PL/I, ALGOL, etc. In less than a decade of its introduction, ‘C’ has become a language of choice for software professionals because it is reliable, simple and easy to use. The UNIX operating system was written in ‘C’ language.

One of the most interesting things about the ‘C’ language is that its compiler is written in ‘C’. ‘C’ language is considered as a middle-level language since it was designed to have both a relatively good programming efficiency and a relatively good machine efficiency. It is a bridge between low level and high-level languages.

• ‘C’ language possesses features of both low level and high-level languages.
• It provides the facility to do programming with easy approaches.
• It provides the facility to do programming at register level which leads to fast processing.
• It consists of simple English like commands, which are easy to understand.
• The programs written in ‘C’ language are 100 per cent efficient and are also machine-independent and portable.
• A ‘C’ program is easier to write and does not vary much from computer to computer.