article

Free access

The development of the C language

Author:

Dennis M. RitchieAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 28, Issue 3

Pages 201 - 208

https://doi.org/10.1145/155360.155580

Published: 01 March 1993 Publication History

PDF eReader

Abstract

The C programming language was devised in the early 1970s as a system implementation language for the nascent Unix operating system. Derived from the typeless language BCPL, it evolved a type structure; created on a tiny machine as a tool to improve a meager programming environment, it has become one of the dominant languages of today. This paper studies its evolution.

References

[1]

American National Standards Institute, American National Standard for Information Systems--Programming Language (7, X3.159-1989.

Google Scholar

[2]

B. Anderson, 'Type syntax in the language C: an object lesson in syntactic innovalion,' SIGPLAN Notices 15 (3), March, 1980, pp. 21-27.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

J.R. Bell, 'Threaded Code," C. ACM 16 (6), pp. 370-372.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

R.H. Canaday and D. M. Riehie, 'Bell l.aboratories BCPL,' AT&T Bell Laborato- Lies inemal memorandum, May, 1969.

Google Scholar

[5]

F.J. Corbat6, M. Me~win-Dagget, R. C. Daley, 'An Ex~ental Time-sharing Systern," AFIPS Conf. Proc. SICC, 1962, pp. 335-344,

Google Scholar

[6]

B.J. Cox and A. J. Novobilski, Object.Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach, Addison-Wesley: Reading, Mass., 1986. Second edition, 1991.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[7]

N, }I. Gehani and W. D. Roome, Concurrent C, Sificon Press: Summit, N J, 1989.

Google Scholar

[8]

K. Jensen and N. Wirth, Pascal User Manual and Report, Springer-Vedag: New York, tteidelberg, Berfin. Second Edition, 1974.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[9]

S.C. Johnson and B. W. Kernighan, 'The Programming language B,' Coop. Sci. Tech. Report #8, AT&T Bell Laboratories (January 19"/3).

Google Scholar

[10]

S.C. Johnson and D. M. Ritchie, 'Portability of C Programs and the UNIX System,' Bell Sys. Tcch. J. 57 (6) (part 2), July-Aug, 1978.

Google Scholar

[11]

S, (~. Johnson. 'A Portable Compiler: Theory and Practice," Proc. 5th ACM POPL Symposium (January 1978).

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

S.C. Johnson, 'Yet another compiler-compiler," in Unix Programmer's Manual, Seventh Edition, Vol. 2A, M. D. McIIroy and B. W. Kemighan, eds. AT&T Bell Labortobies: Murray Ilill, HI, 1979.

Google Scholar

[13]

S.C. Johnson, 'Lint, a Program Checker,' in Unix Programmer's Manual, Seventh Edition, Vol. 2B, M. D. Mcllroy and B. W. Kernighan, eds. A'I'&T Bell Laboratories: Murray Hill, NJ, 1979.

Google Scholar

[14]

B.W. Kernighan and D. M. Ritchie, The C Programming Language, Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1978. Second edition, 1988.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[15]

B.W. Kernighan, 'Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language,' Comp. SoL Tech. Rep. # I00, AT&T Bell Laboratories, 198 I.

Google Scholar

[16]

M.E. Lesk, 'A Portable I/O Package,' AT&T Bell Laboratories internal memorandum ca. 1973.

Google Scholar

[17]

T. MacDonald, 'Arrays of variable length,' J. C Lang. Tram ! (3), Dec. 1989, pp. 215-233.

Google Scholar

[18]

R.M. McClure, 'TMC~---A Syntax Directed Compiler,' Proc. 20th ACM National Conf. (1965), pp. 262-274.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[19]

M.D. McIIroy. 'Macro Instruction Extensions of Compiler Languages,' C. ACM 3 (4), pp. 214-220.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[20]

M.D. Mdlroy and B. W. Kernighan, eds, Un/x Programmer's Manual, Seventh Fxlition, Vol. I, AT&T Bell Laboratories: Murray I lilt, N J, 1979.

Google Scholar

[21]

B. Meyer, Object-oriented Software Construction, l:hrentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[22]

G. Nelson, Systems Progranvning with Modula-3, Prentice-flail: Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ, 1991.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[23]

E.I. OrganicL The Multics System: An Examination of its Structure, MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass., 1975.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[24]

M. Richards, 'The BCPI. Reference Manual,' Mrl" Project MAC Memorandum M- 352, luly 1967.

Google Scholar

[25]

M. Richards and C. Whitbey-Strevens, BCPL: The Language and its Compiler, Cambridge Univ. Press: Cambridge, 1979.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[26]

D, M. Ritchie, 'UNIX: A Retrospective,' Bell Sys. Tech. J. 57 (6) (part 2), July--Aug, 1978.

Google Scholar

[27]

D.M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the UNIX Time-sharing System," AT&T Bell l.abs. Tech. J. 63 (8) ~art 2), Oct_ 1984.

Google Scholar

[28]

13. M. Ritchie, 'Variable-size arrays in C,' J. C l,ang. Trans. 2 (2), Scpl. 1990, pp. 81-86.

Google Scholar

[29]

R, Sethi, 'Uniform syntax for type expressions and declarators,' Soflw. Prac. and Exp. 11 (6), june 1981, pp. 623-628.

Google Scholar

[30]

A. Snyder, A Portable Compiler for the Language (7, MIT: Cambridge. Mass., 1974.

Google Scholar

[31]

J.E. Stoy and C. Suachey, 'OS6---An experimental operating system for a small computer. Part I: General principles and structm'e,' Comp J. 15, (Aug. 1972), pp. 117-124.

Google Scholar

[32]

B, Stroustrup, The C+ + Programming Language, Addison-Wesley: Reading, Mass., 1986. Second edition, 1991.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[33]

C, P. Thacker, E. M. McCreight, B. W. Lampson, R. F. Sproull, D. R. Boggs, 'Alto: A Personal Computer," in Computer Structures: Principles and Examples, D. Sieworek, C. G. Bell, A. Newell, McGraw-Hill: New York, 1982.

Google Scholar

[34]

C* Programming Guide, Thinking Machines Corp.: Cambridge Mass., 1990.

Google Scholar

[35]

K. Thompson, 'Bon~an Interactive Language,' undated AT&T Bell l.aboratorics internal memorandum (ca. 1969).

Google Scholar

[36]

A. van Wijngaarden, B. J. Mailloux. J. E. Peck, C. H. Koster, M. Sintzoff, C. Lindsey, L. G. Meermns, R. G. Fisker, 'Revised report on the algorithmic language Algol 68,' Acta Informatica 5, pp. 1-236.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Brykin GGoryachkin B(2024)New Generation of B Programming Language for Data Analysis Tasks2024 6th International Youth Conference on Radio Electronics, Electrical and Power Engineering (REEPE)10.1109/REEPE60449.2024.10479911(1-6)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/REEPE60449.2024.10479911
Sun YSu YLi MHou C(2024)Memory security vulnerability detection based on fusion of fuzzy testing and contextual features2024 7th International Conference on Computer Information Science and Application Technology (CISAT)10.1109/CISAT62382.2024.10695374(914-918)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/CISAT62382.2024.10695374
Perez-Monte CMercado GTaffernaberry CDiedrichs APiccoli FTobar MLedda MMoralejo RGonzalez R(2024)Embedded Systems Programming Through eUCCvm, an Integrated Educational ToolComputer Science – CACIC 202310.1007/978-3-031-62245-8_5(65-77)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62245-8_5
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The development of the C language
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. History of computing
      1. History of software
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language types

Recommendations

Layout-sensitive language extensibility with SugarHaskell
Haskell '12: Proceedings of the 2012 Haskell Symposium

Programmers need convenient syntax to write elegant and concise programs. Consequently, the Haskell standard provides syntactic sugar for some scenarios (e.g., do notation for monadic code), authors of Haskell compilers provide syntactic sugar for more ...
Layout-sensitive language extensibility with SugarHaskell
Haskell '12

Programmers need convenient syntax to write elegant and concise programs. Consequently, the Haskell standard provides syntactic sugar for some scenarios (e.g., do notation for monadic code), authors of Haskell compilers provide syntactic sugar for more ...
iCoLa: A Compositional Meta-language with Support for Incremental Language Development
SLE 2022: Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering

Programming languages providing high-level abstractions can increase programmers’ productivity and program safety. Language-oriented programming is a paradigm in which domain-specific languages are developed to solve problems within specific domains ...

Reviews

Reviewer: Floyd S. Shipman

C is now the most widely used system implementation language. Its development began when the state of the art in system implementation languages was macro assemblers, and PL/I (IBM's one language for everything, including system implementation) was on its way to becoming a dinosaur. “C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success,” Ritchie states. In this paper, he describes the development and subsequent evolution of C. He explains how C evolved from BCPL to B to C, the influence of ALGOL68, minutia such as where ++x really came from, and how structures and pointers came to be in their current form. This is an interesting paper by a primary developer of C.

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 28, Issue 3

March 1993

363 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/155360

Editor:
Richard L. Wexelblat
ACM SIGPLAN Notices; IDA/CSED, Alexandria, VA

Issue’s Table of Contents

HOPL-II: The second ACM SIGPLAN conference on History of programming languages
April 1993
370 pages
ISBN:0897915704
DOI:10.1145/154766
Conference Chair:
John A. N. Lee,
Program Chair:
Jean E. Sammet

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 March 1993

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 28, Issue 3

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

68
Total Citations
View Citations
5,264
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)933
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)169

Reflects downloads up to 28 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Brykin GGoryachkin B(2024)New Generation of B Programming Language for Data Analysis Tasks2024 6th International Youth Conference on Radio Electronics, Electrical and Power Engineering (REEPE)10.1109/REEPE60449.2024.10479911(1-6)Online publication date: 29-Feb-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/REEPE60449.2024.10479911
Sun YSu YLi MHou C(2024)Memory security vulnerability detection based on fusion of fuzzy testing and contextual features2024 7th International Conference on Computer Information Science and Application Technology (CISAT)10.1109/CISAT62382.2024.10695374(914-918)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/CISAT62382.2024.10695374
Perez-Monte CMercado GTaffernaberry CDiedrichs APiccoli FTobar MLedda MMoralejo RGonzalez R(2024)Embedded Systems Programming Through eUCCvm, an Integrated Educational ToolComputer Science – CACIC 202310.1007/978-3-031-62245-8_5(65-77)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-62245-8_5
Brereton R(2024)IntroductionData Analysis and Chemometrics for Metabolomics10.1002/9781119639398.ch1(1-25)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119639398.ch1
Gobran Tde Carvalho JBarton C(2023)DASS: Dynamic Adaptive Sub-Target Specialization2023 International Symposium on Computer Architecture and High Performance Computing Workshops (SBAC-PADW)10.1109/SBAC-PADW60351.2023.00016(36-45)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/SBAC-PADW60351.2023.00016
Stankov EJovanov MMadevska Bogdanova A(2022)Smart generation of code tracing questions for assessment in introductory programmingComputer Applications in Engineering Education10.1002/cae.2256731:1(5-25)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2022
https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.22567
Lu CChang TLee LSung RSu T(2021)Developing an Optical Measuring System for Hole Saw CapsSymmetry10.3390/sym1312231113:12(2311)Online publication date: 3-Dec-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/sym13122311
Park BSeo S(2021)Efficient Implementation of NIST LWC ESTATE Algorithm Using OpenCL and Web Assembly for Secure Communication in Edge Computing EnvironmentSensors10.3390/s2106198721:6(1987)Online publication date: 11-Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.3390/s21061987
Leimeister JLeimeister J(2021)Systementwicklung und Lifecycle ManagementEinführung in die Wirtschaftsinformatik10.1007/978-3-662-63560-5_6(323-417)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-63560-5_6
Severin TCulic IRadovici A(2020)Enabling High-Level Programming Languages on IoT Devices2020 19th RoEduNet Conference: Networking in Education and Research (RoEduNet)10.1109/RoEduNet51892.2020.9324882(1-6)Online publication date: 11-Dec-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/RoEduNet51892.2020.9324882
Show More Cited By

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Abstract

References

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

Layout-sensitive language extensibility with SugarHaskell

Layout-sensitive language extensibility with SugarHaskell

iCoLa: A Compositional Meta-language with Support for Incremental Language Development

Reviews

Access critical reviews of Computing literature here

Comments

Information

Published In

Publisher

Publication History

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View options

PDF

eReader

Get Access

Login options

Full Access

Figures

Other

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media

Affiliations