C is a programming language developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs in the early 1970s. It is a systems programming language, widely used in the implementation of operating systems and operating system utilities, as well as many other programs. It is one of the most influential programming languages to date.
C is considered the 'language of UNIX'; however, the UNIX operating system in fact predates C, but was re-implemented in C shortly after the language's creation.
C is available on systems including the PDP 11/70.
As C is a compiled language, your program must be compiled and possibly linked before it can be executed.
$ cc program.c -o program $ ./program
From Kernighan and Ritchie (1988).
#include <stdio.h>
main() {
printf("hello, world\n");
}
Kernighan, B. W. & Ritchie, D. M. (1988). The C programming language (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.