C

C is a programming language used widely in Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programming on Web servers. C is the implementation language for UNIX and the UNIX programmer's language of choice.

URLs:

Introduction to The Language List

Collected information on about 2350 computer languages, past and present--a good starting point for research on any computer language.

comp.lang.c Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Up-to-date copies of this FAQ are posted to the newsgroups comp.answers and news.answers.

Learn C/C++ Today--A List of Resources/Tutorials

A good starting point for tutorials and other resources on C.

W3E References:

C++

C++ is an object-oriented implementation of C.

Print References:

• The C Programming Language, Second Edition. Brian Kernighan & Dennis Ritchie. Prentice-Hall. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1988. (ISBN 0-13-110362-8)
• C: A Reference Manual, Fourth Edition. Samuel P. Harbison and Guy L. Steele, Jr. Prentice-Hall. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1995. (ISBN 0-13-326224-3)
• The Foundations of WWW Programming. Ed Tittel, Mark Gaither, Sebastian Hassinger, & Mike Erwin. IDG Books. Foster City, CA. 1995. (ISBN 1-56884-703-3)

Detail:

C was developed in the early 1970s at AT&T's Bell Laboratories by two of the founders of UNIX, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie. C was derived from B, which was inspired by BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), a simplification of CPL (Cambridge Programming Language).

C is a procedural program that describes the steps of an algorithm. It can be compiled into a very tight architecture-neutral binary object resulting in speedy program execution. On the other hand, it is difficult to manipulate strings with C language constructs, a serious disadvantage for implementation with CGI programming.

Various revisions of C have been developed, including ANSI C (a standardization of C), GNU C, and C++. There are numerous programs for converting to C from Pascal, FORTRAN and other programming languages .