What type of programming language does c language belong to?

C language is a process-oriented high-level language. There is no intermediate language in programming languages. For example, assembly language is a low-level language. Assembly language is machine-based and is the mnemonic form of 010101. Most of the other languages ​​are high-level languages.

The development of programming languages ​​has gone through the process from machine language, assembly language to high-level language. Among them, machine language and assembly language are both low-level languages.

C language is a process-oriented language relative to object-oriented programming languages ​​(such as C, Java, etc.). Process-oriented is to achieve the ultimate goal and lacks abstract description (ie modeling) of things. Later, a series of object-oriented programs made up for this shortcoming by introducing the concept of classes.

The C language was developed on the basis of the B language, and its roots can be traced back to ALGOL 60. ALGOL 60, which appeared in 1960, is a problem-oriented high-level language. It is far away from the hardware and is not suitable for writing system programs. In 1963, the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom launched the CPL (Combined Programming Language) language. The CPL language is closer to the hardware based on ALGOL 60, but the scale is relatively large and difficult to implement. In 1967, Matin Richards of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom simplified the CPL language and launched the BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language) language. In 1970, Ken Thompson of Bell Labs in the United States based on the BCPL language and further simplified it, designing a very simple B language (taking the first letter of BCPL) that is very close to the hardware, and wrote the first letter in B language A UNIX operating system, implemented on the PDP-7. In 1971, he implemented B language on PDP-11/20 and wrote the UNIX operating system. But language B is too simple and has limited functions. Between 1972 and 1973, D.M. Ritchie of Bell Labs designed the C language (take the second letter of BCPL) based on the B language. C language not only maintains the advantages of BCPL and B language (conciseness, close to hardware), but also overcomes their shortcomings (too simple, untyped data, etc.). The original C language was designed to provide a working language for describing and implementing UNIX operating systems. In 1973, K.Thompson and D.M.Ritchie collaborated to rewrite more than 90% of UNIX in C (UNIX version 5). The original UNIX operating system was developed in 1969 by K.Thompson and D.M.Ritchie of Bell Labs in the United States. The ones developed successfully are written in assembly language).

Later, C language was improved many times, but it was mainly used within Bell Labs. It was not until the release of the sixth edition of UNIX in 1975 that the outstanding advantages of the C language attracted widespread attention. In 1977, the "Portable C Language Compiler", a C language compiled text that did not depend on specific machines, greatly simplified the work of porting C to other machines. This also promoted the UNIX operating system to rapidly develop in various languages. implemented on the machine. For example, VAX, AT&T and other computer systems have successively developed UNIX. As UNIX becomes more and more widely used, C language is also rapidly popularized. C language and UNIX can be said to be twin brothers, complementing each other in the development process. After 1978, C language has been transplanted to large, medium, small and microcomputers successively, and has become independent of UNIX and PDP. Now C language has become popular all over the world and has become one of the most widely used computer languages ​​in the world.

Based on the C compiler in UNIX version 7 published in 1978, Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie (collectively known as K&R) co-authored the seminal book "The C Programming Lan- guage", the C language introduced in this book became the basis for the later widely used version of the C language, which was called Standard C. In 1983, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) formulated a new standard called ANSI C based on the development and expansion of various versions of C since the advent of the C language. ANSI C has evolved significantly from the original Standard C. K&R revised their classic book "The C Programming Language" in 1988 and rewrote the book according to ANSI C standards. In 1987, ANSI C announced a new standard--87 ANSI C. The currently popular C compilation systems are all based on it.

The above is the detailed content of What type of programming language does c language belong to?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!