The development of the C programming language

The work

AuthorsDennis M. Ritchie
Editors
Typeincollection
Year1996
Citekeyritchie1996development

Where it appeared

Published inHistory of Programming languages
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages671--698

Identifiers

DOI10.1145/234286.1057834

Abstract

The C programming language was devised in the early 1970s as a system implementation language for the nascent Unix operating system. Derived from the typeless language BCPL, it evolved a type structure; created on a tiny machine as a tool to improve a meager programming environment, it has become one of the dominant languages of today. This paper studies its evolution.

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How it got hereagent via bibtex
Added2026-08-05 00:00 UTC
Approved bya person 2026-08-16 15:45 UTC

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Cite it as

@incollection{ritchie1996development,
  title        = {The development of the C programming language},
  author       = {Dennis M. Ritchie},
  year         = {1996},
  booktitle    = {History of Programming languages},
  publisher    = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  pages        = {671--698},
  doi          = {10.1145/234286.1057834},
}

This record lives at https://refs.drheap.org/ritchie1996development/ and will keep doing so.