Editing Low-level programming language (section)

== C programming language ==
{{Main | C (programming language)}}
C has variously been described as low-level and high-level.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jindal |first1=G. |first2=P. |last2=Khurana |first3=T. |last3=Goel |date=January 2013 |title=Comparative study of C, Objective C, C++ programming language |journal=International Journal of Advanced Trends in Computer Science and Engineering |volume=2 |issue=1 |page=203}}</ref> Traditionally considered high-level, C’s level of abstraction from the hardware is far lower than many subsequently developed languages, particularly interpreted languages. The direct interface C provides between the programmer and hardware memory allocation and management make C the lowest-level language of [[Programming_language#Measuring_language_usage|the 10 most popular languages currently in use]].

C is architecture independent — the same C code may, in most cases, be compiled (by different machine-specific compilers) for use on a wide breadth of machine platforms. In many respects (including directory operations and memory allocation), C provides “an interface to system-dependent objects that is itself relatively system independent”.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kernighan |first=B. |author-link1=Brian Kernighan |last2=Ritchie |first2=D. |author-link2=Dennis Ritchie |date=1988 |title=The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition |page=163}}</ref> This feature is considered “high-level” in comparison of platform-specific assembly languages.