C is a middle level and Structured programming Language. It is develop in 1972 at AT & T’s Bell Laboratories of USA. It was designed and written by Dennis Ritchie. In the late seventies C began to replace the more familiar languages of that time like PL/I, ALGOL. C programming language become so popular because it is reliable, simple and easy to understand and use.
C is often called a middle-level computer language. C is thought of as a middle-level language because it combines the best elements of high-level languages with the control and flexibility of assembly language. As a middle-level language, C allows the manipulation of bits, bytes, and addresses— the basic elements with which the computer functions. Despite this fact, C code is also very portable. Portability means that it is easy to adapt software written for one type of computer or operating system to another type.
» High level Programming Language :
BASIC,COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal and Modula-2.
» Middle level Programming Language :
C, C++ and Java.
» Low level Programming Language :
Assembler.
C was invented and first implemented by Dennis Ritchie on a DEC PDP-11 that used the Unix operating system. C is the result of a development process that started with an older language called BCPL. BCPL was developed by Martin Richards, and it influenced a language called B, which was invented by Ken Thompson. B led to the development of C in the 1970s.
During the 1990s, the development of the C++ standard consumed most programmers' attention. However, work on C continued quietly along, with a new standard for C being developed. The end result was the 1999 standard for C, usually referred to as C99. In general, C99 retained nearly all of the features of C89. Thus, C is still C! The C99 standardization committee focused on two main areas: the addition of several numeric libraries and the development of some special-use, but highly innovative, new features, such as variable-length arrays and the restrict pointer qualifier. These innovations have once again put C at the forefront of computer language development.