Case Study: Applications which are developed in C
Abstract: -C programming language is a
general-purpose programming language. It
was developed by Dennis Ritchie at Bell
Laboratories in the year 1972.Since then,
this language has become a major language
throughout the world. [1] When C language
was developed, it was originally developed
for use with the UNIX operating system,
whose most of the part was itself written in
C. However, the spread of C programming
language is far beyond of UNIX system in
the past years. C language was actually
developed for ‘System Programming’ i.e.,
for writing programs like text editors,
compilers and operating system. But the
language has proved itself satisfactory for
other languages too, like telephone
switching systems, database systems, etc.
 Keywords: C language, Applications,
I. Introduction: -
Nowadays it has been considered that
C programming language has become
obsolete and no one is using this language
anymore. Generally, people are thinking that
applications of C programming language are
decreasing day by day. But the fact is that, C
is considered as one of the oldest and
fundamental languages that are widely used
in the world. Programming knowledge is
incomplete without the use of the C
programming language. It continues to
dominate the programming.
C language is a quite fast as well as
portable and has a rich library in it. C is a
middle level programming language but it
has benefits of both low-level languages as
well as high level languages. C
programming language has left its mark in
every domain of programming. C language
is specifically used to develop applications
and for system development work.
 
 
II. Objective: -
To study the complete use of the C
programming language. Like in how many
companies C language is still used and
which are the applications that have been
developed using C programming language.
In short, the thorough study of the use of C
programming language in development of
different applications.
  
III. Methodology of Case Study: -
       Since the objective is clearly to
study the current relevance and
Applications of C Language, we have
divided the cases into various domains
and technologies that are popularly in use
and Implementations and Examples and
illustration are added in each
Application. It includes some codes,
outputs, Architecture diagrams etc. to
signify the importance of it.
        
 
IV. Outcomes: -
This study will prove that the
domination of the C programming language
in the world of programming is still there.
C uses collection of in-built functions
and operators. This helps in writing of the
complex programs. C programs are really
very efficient because they contain variety
of data types and operators. C language is
often called as a middle level language
because it includes the features of both low-
level language and high-level programming
languages. C programming language is
considered as general-purpose programming
language. And that is why it has vast
applications in different domains.[3]
 
 
V. Real World Applications of C
Programming Language: -
       The applications of C programming
language are not limited to the development
of operating systems, like Windows
Operating System or Linux, but also in the
development of GUIs (Graphical User
Interfaces) as well as IDEs (Integrated
Development Environments). Use of the C
programming language is not limited to the
development systems and applications, it has
vast uses.
       The use of C language has spread and
now it has become a general-purpose
programming language because of its usage
and popularity.
Here are some interesting
applications of the C programming
language:
a) Operating System: -
       The first operating system that was
developed using a high-level programming
language was UNIX Operating System,
which was designed using the C
programming language. Later, Microsoft
Windows and various Android applications
were scripted using the C programming
language.
      Operating Systems basically interact
with the hardware. It should be built using
such a programming language that has the
power to read from a memory location and
also the power of writing into a memory
location. C is a programming language
whose code gets translated into a machine-
level (assembly language) and it can run on
any machine i.e.it is machine independent. C
language can be used in various system calls
and has the concept of pointers which makes
it desirable. And that’s the reason why C is
preferred in designing operating systems [4].
Below are few examples:
·   Microsoft’s Windows
·   Linux
·   Apple’s OS X Kernel (iOS)
·   Microsoft Windows utilities
·   Android
·   Windows Phone
   Implementation of C in OS Development
  Here are some features of C that are not
seen in many other languages that make it   hardware.
suitable for OS development:
  Direct memory access. Memory
management is left to the programmer and
therefore is an advantage in OS development
where practically all things useful involve
directly manipulating areas of RAM
No runtime dependencies. Unlike C++,
Java, C# and others, C has absolutely no
runtime dependencies. It doesn't expect a
memory manager, it doesn't expect process
management, the only runtime dependency
it has is that something calls the main()
function. That means that you can write a C
program that runs directly on hardware
without expecting some kind of memory
manager or input or output layer.
Efficient byte-level manipulation. C is
perfectly suitable at efficient byte level
manipulation. That is, copying data to
different areas, flipping bits around, and
processing data in small amounts. While this
is more tedious for the programmer, it is
much more efficient both in usage of RAM
and in processing time, which is essential in
Operating Systems.
All C code has a direct 1-1 translation to
machine code that is easily understandable.
As a result, C has no built in complicated
data structures like trees or hash tables. This
must be implemented by the programmer,
the premise behind this being that the
programmer should be able to see any C
code and know exactly what it does in
    The C (and UNIX) philosophy is that the
programmer knows better than the language,
and this makes it very suitable for fine
tuning details in OS and systems
development, with the obvious downside of
not having convenient structures built in.[6]
b) Embedded Systems: -
       [4] The C programming language is
considered to be the best choice when it
comes to scripting applications and drivers
of embedded systems, as the C language is
closely related to machine hardware.
       An embedded system can be
understood as a hardware system which has
software embedded in it.
Examples:
·   Coffee Maker
·   Microwave 
·   Climate Control Systems
·   Automatic Transmission Systems
·   Tire Pressure Detection System
·   Sensors
Implementation:
The extension of the C language is called an
Embedded C programming language. As
compared with above, the embedded
programming in C language has some
additional features such as data types and
keywords and header file or library file is
represented as
Fig. 1 Embedded C Programming
structure[7]
Embedded C Programming Development
The embedded system is defined as the
combination of embedded C programming
software and hardware part majorly consist
of microcontrollers and it is intended to
perform the specific task. These types of
embedded systems are being used in our
daily life such as washing machines and
video recorders, refrigerators and so on. The
embedded system was first introduced by
the 8051 microcontrollers.[7]
Earlier, many embedded applications were
developed by using assembly level
programming. However, they did not
provide portability to overcome this problem
with the advent of various high-level
languages like C, COBOL, and Pascal.
However, it was the C language that got
extensive acceptance for embedded systems
application development, and it continues to
do so[7]
 
c) GUI: -
·   GUI stands for Graphical User Interface.
Adobe Photoshop, is one of the most used
photo editors since long times, it was created
with the help of C programming language.
Later on, Adobe Premiere and Illustrator
were also created using C language.
·   Windows 32 is a C runtime OS. It allows to
write Windows GUI (Graphical User
Interfaces) applications. But day by day
there is some designing taking place in C
with respect to the GUI.
·   Examples:
·   Adobe Photoshop
·   Adobe Illustrator
·   Adobe Image Ready
Implementation: 
The C Language is a low-level
language and closer to the hardware,
this helps us build powerful software
and manage memory.
A low-level language doesn’t restrict
the developer and gets the whole
control over the hardware and
memory management.
GTK is a multi-platform toolkit that helps us
create Graphical User Interfaces. GTK
provides a collection of widgets and we as a
developer just need to use it to create our
own GUI software.
Widgets in GTK are the fundamental
building block for GUI Programming. The
Widgets in GTK are organized in
hierarchical form.
Everything you see on the screen is widgets.
[9]

          Fig.2 GTK implementation in C
language[9]
 
       Fig. 3 GTK Output of Fig.2  [9]
d) Search Engines: -
       We must have heard about Google
Chromium and Google file systems. These
both were developed using C/C++. In
Google Source Community most of the
projects are handled using C/C++.
 
e) Use of C in Browsers: -
         Thunderbird and Mozilla
Firefox were open-source email client
projects. And they both were written in
C/C++.
f) Databases: 
When SQL is embedded within the C
language, the compiler processes the
compilation in two steps. It first extracts all
the SQL codes from the program and the
pre-compiler will compile the SQL code for
its syntax, correctness, execution path etc.
Once pre-compilation is done, these
executable codes are embedded into the C
code. Then the C compiler will compile the
code and execute the code. Thus the
compilation takes place in two steps – one
for SQL and one for application language.
Hence these types of compilation require all
the query, data value etc to be known at the
compilation time itself to generate the
executable code. Otherwise C or any high
level language cannot compile the code.
Hence the SQL codes written are static and
these embedded SQL is also known as static
SQL. Thus SQLs know how to access DB,
which queries to execute, which values to be
inserted/ deleted/updated etc.
When SQL is embedded in C programming
language, the C compiler will not
understand which the syntax of C is and
which syntax of SQL is. It needs to be
clearly differentiated and compiler should
know which is C and SQL. This is very
important as pre-compiler will first extract
all the SQLs embedded in it to compile it at
DB level. Then it will be embedded in the C
code which will be compiled by the C
compiler to get executable code. All the
embedded SQLs are preceded by ‘EXEC
SQL’ and ends in semicolon (;). We can
have these SQLs placed anywhere in the C
code, provided it is placed in the correct
order- declaration, execution and end. Let us
see below how C code is differentiated from (Notepad-like) way, called evim or Easy
SQL code.[13] Vim.

     Fig. 4 PL/SQL Commands using C data

types[13]

We can note here that variables are written

inside the begin and end block of the SQL, Fig. 5 Implementation of Vim in
but they are declared using C code. It does C
not use SQL code to declare the variables.
Why? This is because they are host variables Gedit:
– variables of C language. Hence we cannot [10]gedit  is the default text editor of the

use SQL syntax to declare them. Host
language supports almost all the datatypes
from int, char, long, float, double, pointer,
array, string, structures etc.[13]
 
GNOME desktop environment and part of
the GNOME Core Applications. Designed
as a general-purpose text editor, gedit
emphasizes simplicity and ease of use, with
a clean and simple GUI, according to the
philosophy of the GNOME project It ]

includes tools for editing source code and

g) Text Editors: -
       Various Text file editors like Gedit
and Vim were also developed using C
language.
structured text such as markup languages.
It is free and open-source software under the
GNU General Public License version 2 or
later.

What Is Vim?
[8]Vim is a highly configurable text editor
built to enable efficient text editing. It is an
improved version of the vi editor distributed
with most UNIX systems.
Vim is often called a "programmer's editor,"
and so useful for programming that many
consider it an entire IDE. It's not just for
programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all
kinds of text editing, from composing email
to editing configuration files.   Fig. 6 Implementation of Gedit
Despite what the above comic suggests, Vim
can be configured to work in a very simple

h) Drivers: -
       C language is also used in writing
driver softwares. Keyboard driver, Mouse
driver and Network driver are written using
C language.
Device drivers are typically written in
C, using the Driver Development Kit
(DDK). There are functional and object-
oriented ways to program drivers, depending
on the language chosen to write in. It is
generally not possible to program a driver in
Visual Basic or other high-level languages.
Because drivers operate in kernel mode,
there are no restrictions on the actions that a
driver may take. A driver may read and
write to protected areas of memory, it may
access I/O ports directly, and can generally
do all sorts of very powerful things. This
power makes drivers exceptionally capable
of crashing an otherwise stable system.
 
The Windows platform DDK comes with
header files, library files, and a command-
line compiler that can be used to write
device drivers in C or C++. There is no
graphical interface to the DDK compiler.
 
i)Interpreters: -
       Language interpreters can also be
created using the C programming language.
Different programming languages
interpreters like MATLAB and Python were
developed using the C programming
language.
In computer science, an interpreter
is a computer program that directly executes
instructions written in a programming or
scripting language, without requiring them
previously to have been compiled into a
machine language program.  compiler-based too. Hence, C language has
j) Use of C Language in Compiler
Design: -
       Creation of Compilers is one of the
most popular uses of C-language. And
keeping in mind the association of C
language with the low-level languages
several other programming languages were
designed.
       Different popular compilers which
were designed using C language are Clang-
C, Apple C, Bloodshed Dev-C, etc.
MinGW:
MinGW is a compiler system based on the
GNU GCC and Binutils projects that
compiles and links code to be run on Win32
(Windows) systems. It provides C, C++ and
Fortran compilers plus other related tools.
Clang C:
[12]clang is a C, C++, and Objective-C
compiler which encompasses preprocessing,
parsing, optimization, code generation,
assembly, and linking. Depending on which
high-level mode setting is passed, Clang will
stop before doing a full link. 
 
k) Use of C in Gaming and
Animations: -
       Gaming Sector requires faster and
compiler-based languages. Since C language
is faster than other languages and it is
several applications in the gaming sector.
One of the most popular and known Snake
Game was designed in C. Some other simple
games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Dino game
were coded in C. By increasing in the
versions of graphics and functions too, id
Software in 2004 developed Doom 3 a first-
person horror shooter game using C.

Here are some more examples of games that

are developed in the C language:

·   Chess game

·   Bouncing ball

·   Archery

·   Pong

·   Minesweeper

l) Use of C In New Programming

Platforms: -

       [5] The C programming language has

given birth to the C++ language, which
includes all the concepts of C and in
addition the object-oriented programming is
also there in C++. But apart from this extent, C still remains in the race and will
various programming languages like continue for a longer period of time.
Mathematica, MATLAB are also based on
concepts of C language.  

       Due to its simplicity and fast References: -

execution, many languages such as Python,
PHP, Java, PERL, JavaScript were
influenced by the development of C
language. C language is used for building
standard libraries in Python. The control
structures as well as the syntax of PERL and
PHP are based on the C language.
 
 
 
Conclusion: -
       No doubt C language is one of the
fastest and simplest programming
languages. In Spite of being one of the
oldest languages, C is still preferred by
many backend developers and companies. C
has rich library it is fast and portable. In
every domain C programming language is
used such as, software development,
hardware, embedded systems, databases, etc.
 
[1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org
[2] https://www.guru99.com
 [3] https://prutor.ai
[4] https://pythonistaplanet.com
[5] https://data-flair.training
[6] Why is C used as the main programming
language for operating systems? - Stack
Overflow
[7] Embedded Systems C Programming
Tutorial using Keil (elprocus.com) 
[8] https://www.vim.org/
[9] Introduction to GUI Programming in C
using GTK | Hack The Developer
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gedit

       It seems that the use of C [11] https://en.wikibooks.org                                    

programming language has been affected
[12]
because of the growing use of the languages
https://clang.llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/cla
like C++ and Java, however C has managed ng.html
to maintain its position in the programming
world. World’s leading companies still use [13] Embedded SQL in DBMS -
the C programming language which states Embedded SQL in SQL (tutorialcup.com)
that C is not an outdated language.  

       [3] Whenever it comes to writing

device driver softwares or other applications
the preferred choice is C language. So even
if the new programming languages have
affected the position of C language to some