C
:C: n. 1. The third letter of the English alphabet. 2. ASCII 1000011. 3.
The name of a programming language designed by Dennis Ritchie during the
early 1970s and immediately used to reimplement Unix
; so called
because many features derived from an earlier compiler named `B' in
commemoration of _its_ parent, BCPL. (BCPL was in turn descended from an
earlier Algol-derived language, CPL.) Before Bjarne Stroustrup settled
the question by designing C++
there was a humorous debate over
whether C's successor should be named `D' or `P'. C became immensely
popular outside Bell Labs after about 1980 and is now the dominant
language in systems and microcomputer applications programming. See also
languages of choice
, indent style
C is often described, with a mixture of fondness and disdain varying
according to the speaker, as "a language that combines all the elegance
and power of assembly language with all the readability and
maintainability of assembly language".
Jargon File Version 4.3.1, 29 JUN 2001 =
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