C is an [old](old.md) [low level](low_level.md) structured [statically typed](static_typing.md) [imperative](imperative.md) compiled [programming language](programming_language.md), it is very fast and currently mostly used by [less retarded software](lrs.md). Though by very strict standards it would still be considered [bloated](bloat.md), compared to any mainstream [modern](modern.md) language it is very bullshitless, [KISS](kiss.md) and greatly established and "culturally stable", so it is also the go-to language of the [suckless](suckless.md) community as well as most true experts, for example the [Linux](linux.md) and [OpenBSD](openbsd.md) developers, because of its good, relatively simple design, **uncontested performance**, **wide support**, great number of compilers, level of control and a greatly established and tested status. C is **perhaps the most important language in history**; it influenced, to smaller or greater degree, basically all of the widely used languages today such as [C++](c.md), [Java](java.md), [JavaScript](javascript.md) etc., however it is not a thing of the past -- in the area of low level programming C is still the number one unsurpassed language. C is by no means perfect but it is currently probably the best choice of a programming language (along with [comun](comun.md), of course). Though C is almost always compiled, there have appeared some C interpreters as well.
{ See https://wiki.bibanon.org/The_Perpetual_Playthings. Also look up *The Ten Commandments for C Programmers* by Henry Spencer. Also the *Write in C* song (parody of *Let it Be*). ~drummyfish }
It is usually **not considered an easy language to learn** because of its low level nature: it requires good understanding of how a [computer](computer.md) actually works and doesn't prevent the programmer from shooting himself in the foot. Programmer is given full control (and therefore responsibility). There are things considered "tricky" which one must be aware of, such as undefined behavior of certain operators and raw pointers. This is what can discourage a lot of modern "coding monkeys" from choosing C, but it's also what inevitably allows such great performance -- undefined behavior allows the compiler to choose the most efficient implementation. On the other hand, C as a language is pretty simple without [modern](modern.md) bullshit concepts such as [OOP](oop.md), it is not as much hard to learn but rather hard to master, as any other true art. In any case **you have to learn C** even if you don't plan to program in it regularly, it's the most important language in history and lingua franca of programming, you will meet C in many places and have to at least understand it: programmers very often use C instead of [pseudocode](pseudocode.md) to explain algorithms, C is used for optimizing critical parts even in non-C projects, many languages compile to C, it is just all around and you have to understand it like you have to understand [English](english.md).
Some of the typical traits of C include great reliance on and utilization of **[preprocessor](preprocessor.md)** ([macros](macro.md), the underlying C code is infamously littered with "`#ifdefs`" all over the place which modify the code just before compiling -- this is mostly used for compile-time configuration and/or achieving better performance and/or for [portability](portability.md)), **[pointers](pointer.md)** (direct access to memory, used e.g. for memory allocation, this is infamously related to "shooting oneself in the foot", e.g. by getting [memory leaks](memory_leak.md)) and a lot of **[undefined behavior](undefined_behavior.md)** (many things are purposefully left undefined in C to allow compilers to generate greatly efficient code, but this sometimes lead to weird [bugs](bug.md) or a program working on one machine but not another, so C requires some knowledge of its specification). You can also infamously meet complicated type declarations like `void (*float(int,void (*n)(int)))(int)`, these are frequently a subject of [jokes](jokes.md) ("look, C is simple").
Unlike many "[modern](modern.md)" languages, C by itself doesn't offer too much advanced functionality such as displaying graphics, working with network, getting keyboard state and so on -- the base language doesn't even have any [input/output](io.md), it's a pure processor of values in memory. The standard library offers things like basic I/O with standard input/output streams, basic operations with [files](file.md), strings, time, math functions and other things, but for anything more advanced you will need an external library like [SDL](sdl.md) or [Posix](posix.md) libraries.
C is said to be a **"[portable](portability.md) [assembly](assembly.md)"** because of its low level nature, great performance etc. -- though C is structured (has control structures such as branches and loops) and can be used in a relatively high level manner, it is also possible to write assembly-like code that operates directly with bytes in memory through [pointers](pointer.md) without many safety mechanisms, so C is often used for writing things like hardware [drivers](driver.md). On the other hand some restrain from likening C to assembly because C compilers still perform many transformations of the code and what you write is not necessarily always what you get.
Mainstream consensus acknowledges that C is among the best languages for writing low level code and code that requires **performance**, such as [operating systems](operating_system.md), [drivers](driver.md) or [games](game.md). Even scientific libraries with normie-language interfaces -- e.g. various [machine learning](machine_learning.md) [Python](python.md) libraries -- usually have the performance critical core written in [C](c.md). Normies will tell you that for things outside this scope C is not a good language, with which we disagree -- [we](lrs.md) recommend using C for basically everything that's supposed to last, i.e. if you want to write a good website, you should write it in C etc.
**Is C low or high level?** This depends on the context. Firstly back in the day when most computers were programmed in [assembly](assembly.md), C was seen as high level, simply because it offered the highest level of abstraction at the time, while nowadays with languages like [Python](python.md) and [JavaScript](js.md) around people see C as very low level by comparison -- so it really depends on if you talk about C in context of "old" or "modern" programming and which languages you compare it to. Secondly it also depends on HOW you program in C -- you may choose to imitate assembly programming in C a lot, avoid using libraries, touch hardware directly, avoid using complex features and creating your own abstractions -- here you are really doing low level programming. On the other hand you can emulate the "modern" high-level style programming in C too, you can even mimic [OOP](oop.md) and make it kind of "C++ with different syntax", you may use libraries that allow you to easily work with strings, heavy macros that pimp the language to some spectacular abomination, you may write your own garbage collector etc. -- here you are basically doing high level programming in C.
**[Fun](fun.md)**: `main[-1u]={1};` is a C [compiler bomb](compiler_bomb.md) :) it's a short program that usually makes the compiler produce a huge binary.
C was developed in 1972 at [Bell Labs](bell_labs.md) alongside the [Unix](unix.md) operating system by [Dennis Ritchie](dennis_ritchie.md) and [Brian Kerninghan](brian_kerninghan.md), as a successor to the [B](b.md) language ([portable](portability.md) language with [recursion](recursion.md)) written by Denis Ritchie and [Ken Thompson](ken_thompson.md), which was in turn inspired by the the [ALGOL](algol.md) language (code blocks, lexical [scope](scope.md), ...). C was for a while called NB for "new B". C was intimately interconnected with Unix and its [hacker culture](hacking.md), both projects would continue to be developed together, influencing each other. In 1973 Unix was rewritten in C. In 1978 Keninghan and Ritchie published a book called *The C Programming Language*, known as *K&R*, which became something akin the C specification. In March 1987 [Richard Stallman](rms.md) along with others released the first version of [GNU C compiler](gcc.md) -- the official compiler of the [GNU](gnu.md) project and the compiler that would go on to become one of the most widely used. In 1989, the [ANSI C](ansi_c.md) standard, also known as C89, was released by the American ANSI -- this is a very well supported and overall good standard. The same standard was also adopted a year later by the international ISO, so C90 refers to the same language. In 1999 ISO issues a new standard that's known as C99, still a very good standard embraced by [LRS](lrs.md). Later in 2011 and 2017 the standard was revised again to C11 and C17, which are however no longer considered good.
C is not a single language, there have been a few standards over the years since its inception in 1970s. The notable standards and versions are:
- **K&R C**: C as described by its inventors in the book *The C Programming Language*, before official standardization. This is kind of too ancient nowadays.
- **C89/C90 (ANSI/ISO C)**: First fully standardized version, usable even today, many hardcore C programmers stick to this version so as to enjoy maximum compiler support.
- **C99**: Updated standard from the year 1999, striking a nice balance between "[modern](modern.md)" and "good old". This is a good version to use in [LRS](lrs.md) programs, but will be a little less supported than C89, even though still very well supported. Notable new features against C89 include `//` comments, [stdint](stdint.md) library (fixed-width integer types), [float](float.md) and `long long` type, variable length stack-allocated [arrays](array.md), variadic [macros](macro.md) and declaration of variables "anywhere" (not just at function start).
[LRS](lrs.md) should use C99 or C89 as the newer versions are considered [bloat](bloat.md) and don't have such great support in compilers, making them less portable and therefore less free.
The standards of C99 and older are considered pretty [future-proof](future_proof.md) and using them will help your program be future-proof as well. This is to a high degree due to C having been established and tested better than any other language; it is one of the oldest languages and a majority of the most essential software is written in C, C compiler is one of the very first things a new hardware platform needs to implement, so C compilers will always be around, at least for historical reasons. C has also been very well designed in a relatively minimal fashion, before the advent of modern feature-creep and and bullshit such as [OOP](oop.md) which cripples almost all "modern" languages.
C is extreme well established, standardized and implemented so there is a great number of C compilers around. Let us list only some of the more notable ones.
- [gcc](gcc.md): The main "big name" that can compile all kinds of languages including C, used by default in many places, very [bloated](bloat.md) and can take long to compile big programs, but is pretty good at [optimizing](optimization.md) the code and generating fast code. Also has number of frontends and can compile for many platforms. Uses GENERIC/GIMPLE [intermediate representation](intermediate_representation.md).
- [clang](clang.md): Another big bloated compiler, kind of competes with gcc, is similarly good at optimization etc. Uses [LLVM](llvm.md) intermediate representation.
- [tcc](tcc.md): Tiny C compiler, [suckless](suckless.md), orders of magnitude smaller (currently around 25 KLOC) and simpler than gcc and clang, doesn't use any intermediate representation, cannot optimize nearly as well as the big compilers so the generated executables can be a bit slower and/or bigger (though sometimes they may be smaller), however besides its internal simplicity there are many advantages, mainly e.g. fast compilation (claims to be 9 times faster than gcc) and small tcc executable (about 100 kB). Seems to only support x86 at the moment.
- [DuskCC](duskcc.md): [Dusk OS](duskos.md) C compiler written in [Forth](forth.md), focused on extreme simplicity, probably won't adhere to standards completely.
Besides the pure C language the C standard specifies a set of [libraries](library.md) that have to come with a standard-compliant C implementation -- so called standard library. This includes e.g. the *stdio* library for performing standard [input/output](io.md) (reading/writing to/from screen/files) or the *math* library for mathematical functions. It is usually relatively okay to use these libraries as they are required by the standard to exist so the [dependency](dependency.md) they create is not as dangerous, however many C implementations aren't completely compliant with the standard and may come without the standard library. Also many stdlib implementations suck or you just can't be sure what the implementation will prefer (size? speed?) etc. So for sake of [portability](portability.md) it is best if you can avoid using standard library.
The standard library (libc) is a subject of live debate because while its interface and behavior are given by the C standard, its implementation is a matter of each compiler; since the standard library is so commonly used, we should take great care in assuring it's extremely well written, however we ALWAYS have to choose our priorities and make tradeoffs, there just mathematically CANNOT be an ultimate implementation that will be all extremely fast and extremely memory efficient and extremely portable and extremely small. So choosing your C environment usually comprises of choosing the C compiler and the stdlib implementation. As you probably guessed, the popular implementations ([glibc](glibc.md) et al) are [bloat](bloat.md) and also often just [shit](shit.md). Better alternatives thankfully exist, such as:
Firstly let's sum up some of the reasons why C is so good:
- **C as a language is relatively simple**: Though strictly speaking it's not in the league of most minimal languages like [Forth](forth.md) and [Lisp](lisp.md), C is the next best thing in terms of [minimalism](minimalism.md) and the small amount of bloat it contains is usually somehow justified at least, the language (or its subset) can be implemented in a quite minimal way if one so desires. It employs little [abstraction](abstraction.md). This all helps performance, freedom and encourages many implementations. C's standard library also isn't gigantic, the important parts basically just provide I/O and help with simple things like manipulating strings and memory allocation, so new C implementations aren't burdened by having to implement tons of libraries.
- **It is extremely fast and efficient**: Owing to other mentioned points such as good specification, simplicity, lack of bullshit and having a good balance between low and high level attributes, C is known for being possibly the fastest [portable](portability.md) language in existence, also greatly efficient with memory etc.
- **C doesn't limit you or hold (tie) your hands**: This is bad for the beginner but great for the expert, most of the times C won't "protect" you from doing anything, even crashing your program -- this kind of freedom is necessary to achieve truly marvelous things, C is like a race car, it doesn't have speed limiters and automatic transmission, nothing that would tie your hands or increase the car weight, it trusts in you being a good driver.
- **C is highly standardized**: Many languages have some kind of "online specification", however C is on the next level by literally being officially standardized by the forefront standardizing organizations like ANSI and ISO, by full time paid experts over many years and iterations, so the language is extremely well defined and described, down to saying which exact things are left undefined/unspecified, leaving freedom of implementation that leads to the language's great performance.
- **It's extremely well establishes, optimized, stable and time tested, with many tools**: Being among the oldest languages, the language of the old time [hackers](hacking.md) and the language of [Unix](unix.md), maybe the most important piece of software in history, C has been so widely adopted, reimplemented, optimized and tested over and over that it's considered to be among the most essential pieces of software any platform has to have. Everything on the low level is written in C, so you essentially first have to have C to be able to run anything else. Many companies have invested great many resources to making C fast as it benefited them. While other languages come and go, or at least mutate and become something else over time, C stands as one of very few stable things in computer technology. There are also tons and tons of tools that help with C development, various static analyzers, debuggers, code beautifiers etcetc.
- **It doesn't have any [modern](modern.md) [bullshit](bullshit.md)**: There is no [OOP](oop.md), [generics](generics.md), [garbage collection](garbage_collection.md), no [package manager](package_manager.md) etc.
- **There is a huge number of [compilers](compiler.md)**: While a "[modern](modern.md)" language has some kind of main reference implementation and then maybe one of two alternative implementations, C has dozens (maybe even hundreds) of compilers. You'll find compilers under all the [licenses](license.md), huge ones with many features and great optimizations, small ones that will run on tiny devices, ones that compile very fast, ones that translate C to other languages etcetc.
- **It is elitist**: The relatively higher difficulty of learning the language has a nice effect of keeping idiots out of its community, keeping the language less intoxicated by retarded ideas. { NOTE: The word "elitist" here is not to really mean inherently "discriminating" of course, but rather "unpopular" because it's quite different from the mainstream and requires some effort on unlearning bad mainstream habits, i.e. nowadays it needs some dedication, you can't just join in effortlessly. It's elitist in the same way in which Unix systems or suckless software are elitist. ~drummyfish }
- **C is close to the [hardware](hw.md), reflecting how computers work**: This has many advantages: firstly efficiency, as code that maps well to hardware is predictable and efficient, lacking [magic](magic.md) in translation. It simplifies implementations, making the language more free. Then also the programmer himself is close to the machine, he has to learn how it works, what it likes and dislikes -- a knowledge every programmer has to have.
- **There is a great balance between low and high level (minimalism vs "features")**: C seems to have hit a sweet spot at which it offers just enough high level features for comfortable programming, such as [data types](data_type.md), functions and expressions, while not crossing the line beyond which it would have to pay a high cost for this comfort, i.e. it managed to buy us a lot practically for free. Things like this cannot really be planned well, it takes a genius and intuition to design a language this way, this shows the greatness of the old master programmers.
- **It is [old](old.md), written only by white male [hackers](hacking.md), at times when [capitalism](capitalism.md) was weaker**: No [women](woman.md) were probably involved in the development (of course we aren't racists or sexists, it's just a fact that white men are best at programming), the development was largely part of genuine research, at the time when computers weren't mainstream and computer technology wasn't being raped as hard as today. C developers didn't even think of embedding any political message in the language. Times like this will never be repeated.
Now let's admit that nothing is [perfect](perfect.md), not even C; it was one of the first relatively higher level languages and even though it has showed to have been designed extremely well, some things didn't age great, or were simply bad from the start. We still prefer this language as usually the best choice, but it's good to be aware of its downsides or smaller issues, if only for the sake of one day designing a better language. Please bear in mind all here are just suggestions, they made of course be a subject to counter arguments and further discussion. Here are some of the **bad things** about the language:
- **C specification (the ISO standard) is [proprietary](proprietary.md)** :( The language itself probably can't be copyrighted, nevertheless this may change in the future, and a proprietary specs lowers C's accessibility and moddability (you can't make derivative versions of the spec).
- **The specification is also long as fuck** (approx. 500 pages, our of that 163 of the pure language), indicating [bloat](bloat.md)/complexity/obscurity. A good, free language should have a simple definition. It could be simplified a lot by simplifying the language itself as well as dropping some truly legacy considerations (like [BCD](bcd.md) systems?) and removing a lot of undefined behavior.
- **Some behavior is weird and has unnecessary exceptions**, for example a function can return anything, including a `struct`, except for an array. This makes it awkward to e.g. implement vectors which would best be made as arrays but you want functions to return them, so you may do hacks like wrapping them inside a struct just for this.
- **Some things could be made simpler**, e.g. using [reverse polish](reverse_polish.md) notation for expressions, rather than expressions with brackets and operator precedence, would make implementations much simpler, increasing sucklessness (of course readability is an argument).
- **Some things could be dropped entirely** ([enums](enum.md), [bitfields](bitfield.md), possibly also unions etc.), they can be done and imitated in other ways without much hassle.
- **The preprocessor isn't exactly elegant**, it has completely different syntax and rules from the main language, not very suckless -- ideally preprocessor uses the same language as the base language.
- **The syntax is sucky sometimes**, e.g. case with variable inside it HAS TO be enclosed in curly brackets but other ones don't, data type names may consist of multiple tokens (`long long int` etc.), multiplication uses the same symbol as pointer dereference (`*`), many preprocessor commands need to be on separate lines (makes some one liners impossible), also it's pretty weird that the condition after `if` has to be in brackets etc., it could all be designed better. Keywords also might be better being single chars, like `?` instead of `if` etc. (see [comun](comun.md)). A shorter source code that doesn't try to imitate English would be probably better.
- **Some undefined/unspecified behavior is probably unnecessary** -- undefined behavior isn't bad in general of course, it is what allows C to be so fast and efficient in the first place, but some of it has shown to be rather cumbersome; for example the unspecified representation of integers, their binary size and behavior of floats leads to a lot of trouble (unknown upper bounds, sizes, dangerous and unpredictable behavior of many operators, difficult testing etc.) while practically all computers have settled on using 8 bit bytes, [two's complement](twos_complement.md) and IEEE754 for [floats](float.md) -- this could easily be made a mandatory assumption which would simplify great many things without doing basically any harm. New versions of C actually already settle on two's complement. This doesn't mean C should be shaped to reflect the degenerate "[modern](modern.md)" trends in programming though!
- Some basic things that are part of libraries or extensions, like fixed width types and binary literals and possibly very basic I/O (putchar/readchar), could be part of the language itself rather than provided by libraries.
| `int` (`signed int`, ...) | integer, at least -32767 to 32767 (16 bit), often more | `%d` | native integer, **fast** (prefer for speed) |
| `unsigned int` | integer, non-negative, at least 0 to 65535, often more | `%u` | same as `int` but no negative values |
| `signed char` | integer, at least -127 to 127, mostly -128 to 127 |`%c`, `%hhi`| `char` forced to be signed |
| `unsigned char` | integer, at least 0 to 255 (almost always the case) |`%c`, `%hhu`| smallest memory chunk, **[byte](byte.md)** |
| `char` | integer, at least 256 values | `%c` | signed or unsigned, used for string characters |
| `short` | integer, at least -32767 to 32767 (16 bit) | `%hd` | like `int` but supposed to be smaller |
| `unsigned short` | integer, non-negative, at least 0 to 65535 | `%hu` | like `short` but unsigned |
| `long` | integer, at least -2147483647 to 2147483647 (32 bit) | `%ld` | for big signed values |
| `unsigned long` | integer, at least 0 to 4294967295 (32 bit) | `%lu` | for big unsigned values |
| `long long` | integer, at least some -9 * 10^18 to 9 * 10^18 (64 bit)| `%lld` | for very big signed values |
| `unsigned long long` | integer, at least 0 to 18446744073709551615 (64 bit) | `%llu` | for very big unsigned values |
| `float` | floating point, some -3 * 10^38 to 3 * 10^38 | `%f` |[float](float.md), tricky, bloat, can be slow, avoid|
| `double` | floating point, some -1 * 10^308 to 10^308 | `%lf` | like `float` but bigger |
| `T [N]` | array of `N` values of type `T` | | **array**, if `T` is `char` then **string** |
| `T *` | memory address | `%p` | pointer to type `T`, (if `char` then **string**) |
| `uint8_t` | 0 to 255 (8 bit) |`PRIu8` |exact width, two's compl., must include `<stdint.h>`|
| `int8_t` | -128 to 127 (8 bit) |`PRId8` | like `uint8_t` but signed |
| `uint16_t` | 0 to 65535 (16 bit) |`PRIu16` | like `uint8_t` but 16 bit |
| `int16_t` | -32768 to 32767 (16 bit) |`PRId16` | like `uint16_t` but signed |
| `uint32_t` | -2147483648 to 2147483647 (32 bit) |`PRIu32` | like `uint8_t` but 32 bit |
| `int32_t` | 0 to 4294967295 (32 bit) |`PRId32` | like `uint32_t` but signed |
| `int_least8_t` | at least -128 to 127 |`PRIdLEAST8`| signed integer with at least 8 bits, `<stdint.h>` |
| `int_fast8_t` | at least -128 to 127 |`PRIdFAST8` | fast signed int. with at least 8 bits, `<stdint.h>`|
| struct | | | structured data type |
There is no **bool** (true, false), use any integer type, 0 is false, everything else is true (there may be some bool type in the stdlib, don't use that). A **string** is just array of chars, it has to end with value 0 (NOT ASCII character for "0" but literally integer value 0)!
