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The followingoutline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to C:

C is ageneral-purpose programming language,procedural programming language,compiled language, andstatically typed programming language. It was created byDennis Ritchie in 1972 atBell Labs as a successor to theB programming language.^[1]

C can be described as all of the following:

• Programming language — artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer.
• Compiled language — language implemented throughcompilers rather thaninterpreters
• Procedural programming language —programming paradigm based on the concept ofprocedure calls
• General-purpose programming language — designed for writing software in a wide variety of application domains
• Statically typed programming language —type checking is performed atcompile-time^[2][3]

• B programming language — precursor to C^[4]
• K&R C — early version described byKernighan andRitchie
• ANSI C /ISO C standards:^[5]
  • C89/C90
  • C99
  • C11
  • C17
  • C23 — current standard^[6]

• Constructs that behave differently in C and C++
• Cyber security^[15]
• Undefined behavior

This article is part ofa series on the C programming language

C libraries and tools Adns ALSA Allegro APR Argon2 Assimp bdwgc Berkeley DB BFD BGI BSAFE Chipmunk C POSIX library C standard library Cairo CGNS CLIPS Core Audio Core Foundation Core Image Core Text Cryptlib cURL DevIL DirectFB Dld Expat FFmpeg Fontconfig FreeTDS FreeType GD Graphics Library GDK GEGL GGI GIO GLib glibc GLFW GNet GNU Libtool GNU portability library GNU Portable Threads GNU Readline GnuTLS GObject GTK Scene Graph Kit GTK HDF Intel IPP IUP J2K-Codec JasPer LDAP API LZO Liba52 Libaf Libao2 libarchive Libart Libass Libavcodec Libavdevice Libavfilter Libavformat Libpcap Libdca Libdvdcss libevent libffi Libgegl libgcrypt Libgimp Libhybris Libinput libjpeg libLAS Libmpcodecs Libmpdemux libpng Libpostproc libpq LibreSSL Librsb Librsvg libsndfile libsodium Libswscale LibTIFF Libusb libuv LibVLC LibVNCServer Libvpx Libwww libxml2 Libxslt libzip LMDB LittleCMS LZ4 LZFSE MatrixSSL Mbed TLS MediaLib Mesa Microwindows Ming Mongoose Mpg123 MPIR MsQuic MuJoCo Mustache Ncurses Nettle Newt Netpbm Nghttp2 Nrrd Oniguruma OpenCL OpenCV OpenGL OpenGL Utility Library OpenJPEG OpenSSL Pango PCRE PROJ Quartz 2D Raylib Redland RDF S2n-tls Setcontext SFML SDL SQLite systemd Tk VDPAU Vorbis VTD-XML Win32 API Wimlib Windows.h WolfSSH WolfSSL X Toolkit Intrinsics x264 XCB Xft Xlib XMDF XMLStarlet zlib Zopfli Zstd

C IDEs Anjuta AppCode C++Builder CLion Code::Blocks CodeLite Dev-C++ Eclipse CDT Geany KDevelop LabWindows/CVI Microsoft Visual Studio MonoDevelop NetBeans IDE OpenWatcom Oracle Solaris Studio Pelles C IDE Qt Creator SlickEdit Ultimate++ Understand Visual Studio Code Xcode

C compilers Acorn C/C++ AMD Optimizing C/C++ Compiler Amsterdam Compiler Kit Aztec C BDS C Cc65 Ccache Clang CodeWarrior Comeau C/C++ C++Builder Csmith Deep Blue C Digital Mars DJGPP FpgaC GNU Compiler Collection HP aC++ IBM XL C/C++ Compilers Intel C++ Compiler LabWindows/CVI Lattice C LCC Macintosh Programmer's Workshop Megamax C Microsoft Visual C++ MinGW Mingw-w64 Norcroft C compiler Open64 Oracle Developer Studio PathScale Portable C Compiler The Portland Group QuickC ROSE SAS/C Small Device C Compiler Small-C TDM-GCC TenDRA Compiler THINK C Tiny C Compiler Turbo C Vbcc VisualAge Watcom C/C++ Whitesmiths Z88DK Zig

C mathematical libraries Automatically Tuned Linear Algebra Software Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms BLOPEX C mathematical functions Fastest Fourier Transform in the West GNU MPFR GNU Multiple Precision Arithmetic Library GNU Scientific Library hypre Integer set library LAPACK Libfixmath Lis (linear algebra library) LOBPCG Math Kernel Library Mathomatic OpenBLAS PARI/GP ScaLAPACK PETSc SLEPc UMFPACK

See also C syntax History of C List of C programming books List of C software and tools List of C-family programming languages List of free software programmed in C Outline of the C programming language

Computer programming portal C programming (Wikibooks)

v t e

• GCC — GNU Compiler Collection
• Clang —LLVM C compiler
• MSVC — Microsoft Visual C++ compiler (supports C)
• TinyCC
• Turbo C

The C standard library provides fundamental routines for:^[16]

• Input/output (stdio.h)
• String handling (string.h)
• Mathematical computations (math.h)
• Memory management (stdlib.h)
• Time and date (time.h)

• GLib
• SDL
• GSL
• libcurl
• OpenSSL

• CPython — thereference implementation of thePython programming language
• Git —version control system
• Linux kernel
• Lua
• PostgreSQL —relational database system
• Redis —in-memory database
• SQLite — embeddeddatabase engine
• Unix — originally rewritten in C atBell Labs
• Vim

• Articles with example C code

• Andrew Koenig –C Traps and Pitfalls
• Brian W. Kernighan –The C Programming Language
• Guy L. Steele Jr. –C: A Reference Manual
• Herbert Schildt –C, The Complete Reference
• Peter van der Linden –Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets

• C/C++ Users Journal — (historical publication)

• John Carmack – game programmer, known forDoom andQuake.
• Brian Kernighan — wroteThe C Programming Language book
• Rob Pike – worked onUnix andPlan 9, contributed to C and its ecosystem.
• Dennis Ritchie — created the C programming language
• Richard Stallman – founder of theGNU Project
• Tim Sweeney – founder ofEpic Games and creator ofUnreal Engine
• Ken Thompson —Unix
• Linus Torvalds —Linux

• Cyclone — safe variant
• Embedded C
• GNU C — features specific to GCC
• K&R C
• Microsoft C — Microsoft-specific extensions
• Objective-C — object-oriented extension of C

• Codecademy –interactive C programming lessons
• GeeksforGeeks – tutorials, coding examples, and interactive programming for C concepts and data structures
• Learn-C.org – free interactive C tutorial for beginners
• CProgramming.com Tutorial – tutorials, examples, and best practices for learning C^[17]
• W3Schools – beginner-friendlyC tutorials
• Wikibooks C Programming – free open-content textbook

• Codeforces – an online platform for programming contests that supports C submissions
• Codewars – gamified coding challenges
• HackerRank – competitive programming and interview preparation site with C challenges
• LeetCode – online judge and problem-solving platform

• Compatibility of C and C++
• List of software programming journals
• List of C-family programming languages
• Outline of computer programming
• Outline of software
• Outline of software engineering

• Outline of the C sharp programming language
• Outline of the C++ programming language
• Outline of the Java programming language
• Outline of the JavaScript programming language
• Outline of the Perl programming language
• Outline of the Python programming language
• Outline of the Rust programming language

• ISO C standard information
• C reference on cppreference.com

• C (programming language) software
• C (programming language) libraries
• Lists of software
• Free software programmed in C
• Programming languages
• Software by programming language
• Mathematical libraries
• C (programming language)
• Outlines of computing and engineering
• Outlines

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