Salient features of C:
C is a general purpose, structured programming language. Among the two types of
programming languages discussed earlier, C lies in between these two categories. Thats
why it is often called a middle level language. It means that it combines the elements of
high level languages with the functionality of assembly language. It provides relatively
good programming efficiency (as compared to machine oriented language) and relatively
good machine efficiency as compared to high level languages). As a middle level
language, C allows the manipulation of bits, bytes and addresses the basic elements with
which the computer executes the inbuilt and memory management functions. C code is
very portable, that it allows the same C program to be run on machines with different
hardware configurations. The flexibility of C allows it to be used for systems programming
as well as for application programming.
task. It is easy for debugging, testing, and maintenance if a language is a structured one. C
task. It is easy for debugging, testing, and maintenance if a language is a structured one. C
supports several control structures such as while, do-while and for and various data
structures such as strucs, files, arrays etc. as would be seen in the later units. The basic
unit of a C program is a function - Cs standalone subroutine. The structural component of
C makes the programming and maintenance easier.
Characters used in C
Alphabets
Upper case letters A to Z
Lower case letter a to z
Numbers
0 to 9
Special Characters
Identifier An identifier is a name having a few letters, numbers and special character
_ (Underscore). It is used to identify a variable, function, symbolic constant and so on. An
identifier can be written with a maximum 31 characters. It is a good practice to have
identifiers with few letters; less than 8 letters is commonly followed with the first letter
identifiers with few letters; less than 8 letters is commonly followed with the first letter
being an alphabet.
Ex:-
c3
sum
PI
sigma
matadd
Keywords or Reserved words C language uses the following keywords which are
not available to users to use them as variables/function names. Generally all keywords are
in lower case although uppercase of same names can be used as identifiers.
C Tokens Examples