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The C-family programming languages share significant features of the C programming language. Many were developmentally influenced by C due to its success and ubiquity. The family also includes predecessors that influenced C's design such as BCPL.
Notable programming sources use terms like C-style, C-like, a dialect of C, having C-like syntax. The term curly bracket programming language denotes a language that shares C's block syntax.
C-family languages have features like:
- Code block delimited by curly braces (
{}), a.k.a. braces, a.k.a. curly brackets
- Parameter list delimited by parentheses (
())
- Infix notation for arithmetical and logical expressions
C-family languages span multiple programming paradigms, conceptual models, and run-time environments.
| Language | Year begun | Created by (at) | Brief description, relationship to C | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agora | 1993 | Dr. Patrick Steyaert | A reflective, prototype-based, object-oriented programming language that is based exclusively on message passing and not delegation. | |
| Alef | 1995 | Phil Winterbottom (Bell Labs) | Created for systems programming on the Plan 9 from Bell Labs operating system; published in 1995 and eventually abandoned. It provided substantial language support for concurrent programming. | |
| Amiga E | 1993 | Wouter van Oortmerssen | A combination of many features from several languages, but follows the original C language most closely in basic concepts. | |
| AMPL | 1985 | Robert Fourer, David Gay and Brian Kernighan (Bell Labs) | An algebraic modeling language with elements of a scripting language. | |
| AWK | 1977 | Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger & Brian Kernighan (Bell Labs) | Designed for text processing and typically used as a data extraction and reporting tool. | |
| Axum | 2009 | Microsoft | A domain specific concurrent language, based on the actor model. | |
| BCPL | 1966 | Martin Richards | A procedural, imperative, and structured language. Precursor to C. | |
| C | 1969-1973 | Dennis Ritchie (Bell Labs) | Enhancement of Ken Thompson's B language. | |
| C shell/tcsh | 1978 | Bill Joy (UC Berkeley) | Scripting language and standard Unix shell. | |
| C* | 1987 | Thinking Machines | Object-oriented, data-parallel ANSI C superset. | |
| C++ | 1979 | Bjarne Stroustrup (Bell Labs) | Named as "C with Classes" and renamed C++ in 1983; it began as a reimplementation of static object orientation in the tradition of Simula 67, and through standardization and wide use has grown to encompass generic programming as well as its original object-oriented roots. | |
| C-- | 1997 | Simon Peyton Jones, Norman Ramsey | Generated mainly by compilers for very high-level languages. | |
| Cg | 2002 | Nvidia | Based on the C language and although they share the same syntax, some features of C were modified and new data types were added to make Cg more suitable for programming graphics processing units. This language is only suitable for GPU programming and is not a general programming language. | |
| Ch | 2001 | Harry Cheng | A C/C++ scripting language with extensions for shell programming and numerical computing. | |
| Chapel | 2009 | Cray Inc. | Aims to improve the programmability of parallel computers in general and the Cray Cascade system in particular. | |
| Charm | 1996 | P. Nowosad | An object-oriented language with similarities to the RTL/2, Pascal and C languages in addition to containing some unique features of its own. | |
| Cilk | 1994 | MIT Laboratory for Computer Science | General-purpose language designed for multithreaded parallel computing. | |
| CINT | 1997-1999? | Masaharu Goto | An interpreted version of C/C++, much in the way BeanShell is an interpreted version of Java. | |
| Claire | 1994 | Yves Caseau | A high-level functional and object-oriented language with rule processing abilities. | |
| Cyclone | 2001 | Greg Morrisett (AT&T Labs) | Intended to be a safe dialect of the C language. It is designed to avoid buffer overflows and other vulnerabilities that are endemic in C programs, without losing the power and convenience of C as a tool for system programming. | |
| C# | 2000 | Anders Hejlsberg | Developed by Microsoft in the early 2000s as a modern, object-oriented language for the .NET framework. | |
| D | 2001 | Walter Bright (Digital Mars) | Based on C++, but with an incompatible syntax having traits from other C-like languages like Java and C#. | |
| Dart | 2013 | Lars Bak and Kasper Lund (Google) | A class-based, single inheritance, object-oriented language with C-style syntax. | |
| E | 1997 | Mark S. Miller, Dan Bornstein (Electric Communities) | Designed with secure computing in mind, accomplished chiefly by strict adherence to the object-oriented computing model. | |
| eC | 2004 | Jérôme Jacovella-St-Louis (Ecere) | A super-set of C adding object-oriented features (inspired by C++), properties, dynamic modules and reflection developed as part of the Ecere SDK project, an open-source cross-platform SDK. | |
| Fantom | 2005 | Brian Frank and Andy Frank | An object-oriented, functional, actor concurrent with a null-able aware type system emphasizing pragmatism in building enterprise systems running on top of the JVM or the CLR or JavaScript. | |
| Fusion (formerly Ć) | 2011 | Piotr Fusik and Adrian Matoga | Fusion is a language based on C and C#. Aimed at crafting portable programming libraries, with syntax akin to C#. The translated code is lightweight (no virtual machine, emulation nor large runtime). | |
| Go | 2007 | Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and Robert Griesemer (Google) | Released to public in 2009, it is a concurrent language with fast compilations, Java-like syntax, but no object-oriented features and strong typing. | |
| Hack | 2014 | Julien Verlaguet, Alok Menghrajani, Drew Paroski (Facebook) | A language for the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM). | |
| Handel-C | 1996 | Oxford University Computing Laboratory | A high-level language which targets low-level hardware, most commonly used in the programming of FPGAs. It is a rich subset of C. | |
| HolyC | 2005 | Terry A. Davis | A dialect of C for Terry's own operating system TempleOS. | |
| Java | 1991 | James Gosling (Sun Microsystems) | Created as Oak, and released to the public in 1995. It is an OODL based inspired heavily by Objective-C, though with a syntax based somewhat on C++. Compiles to its own bytecode, and is strongly typed. | |
| JavaScript | 1995 | Brendan Eich (Netscape) | Created as Mocha and LiveScript, announced in 1995, shipped the next year as JavaScript. Primarily a scripting language used in Web page development as well as numerous application environments such as Adobe Flash and QtScript. Though initially based on Scheme and Self, it is primarily a prototype-based object-oriented language with a syntax based on Java. Standardized as ECMAScript. | |
| Limbo | 1995 | Limbo succeeded Alef and is used in Inferno as Alef was used in Plan9. | ||
| LSL | 2003 | Robin Liden | Created for the Second Life virtual world by Linden Lab. | |
| Lite-C | 2007 | Atari Inc | A language for multimedia applications and personal computer games, using a syntax subset of the C language with some elements of the C++ language. | |
| LPC | 1995 | Lars Pensjö | Developed originally to facilitate MUD building on LPMuds. Though designed for game development, its flexibility has led to it being used for various purposes. | |
| Neko | 2005 | Nicolas Cannasse (Motion-Twin) | A high-level dynamically typed language. | |
| Nemerle | 2003 | Kamil Skalski, Michał Moskal, Prof. Leszek Pacholski, Paweł Olszta at Wrocław University | A general-purpose high-level statically typed language designed for platforms using the Common Language Infrastructure (.NET/Mono). | |
| nesC | 2003 | David Gay, Philip Levis, Robert von Behren, Matt Welsh, Eric Brewer, & David Culler | Pronounced "NES-see", it is an extension to the C language designed to embody the structuring concepts and execution model of TinyOS, an event-driven operating system designed for sensor network nodes with very limited resources. | |
| Newsqueak | 1988 | Rob Pike | A concurrent language for writing application software with interactive graphical user interfaces, the syntax and semantics are influenced by the C language, but its approach to concurrency was inspired by Communicating sequential processes (CSP). | |
| Nim | 2008 | Andreas Rumpf | An imperative, multi-paradigm, compiled language. | |
| Noop | 2009 | Attempts to blend the best features of "old" and "new" languages, while syntactically encouraging good programming practice. | ||
| Not eXactly C (NXC) | 2006 | John Hansen | A high-level language for the Lego Mindstorms NXT. NXC, which is short for Not eXactly C, is based on Next Byte Codes, an assembly language. NXC has a syntax like C. It is part of the BricX IDE that integrates editor, tools for interfacing with the brick, and the compiler, but supports more languages. | |
| Not Quite C (NQC) | 1998 (approx.) | David Baum | An embedded systems programming language, application programming interface (API), and native bytecode compiler toolkit for the Lego Mindstorms RCX platform, Cybermaster and LEGO Spybotics systems. It is intended as a drop-in replacement for the LabVIEW-based ROBOLAB IDE. It is primarily based on the C language but has specific limits, such as a maximum number of subroutines and variables allowed. Later replaced with Not eXactly C (NXC), an enhanced version created for the Mindstorms NXT platform. | |
| Oak | 1991 | James Gosling (Sun Microsystems) | A language created initially for Sun Microsystems set-top box project, it later evolved to become Java. | |
| Objective-C | 1986 | Brad Cox and Tom Love | An object-oriented dynamic language based heavily on Smalltalk. A loosely defined de facto standard library by the original developers has now largely been displaced by OpenStep FoundationKit variants. | |
| OpenCL C | 2009 | Apple, Khronos Group | OpenCL specifies a modified subset of the C language for writing programs to run on various compute devices, e.g., GPUs, DSPs. | |
| Perl | 1988 | Larry Wall | Scripting language used extensively for system administration, text processing, and web server tasks. | |
| PHP | 1995 | Rasmus Lerdorf | Widely used as a server-side scripting language. C-like syntax. | |
| Pike | 1994 | Fredrik Hübinette | An interpreted, general-purpose, high-level, cross-platform, dynamic programming language, with a syntax similar to that of C. | |
| PROMAL | 1985 | Systems Management Associates | A C-like language for MS-DOS, Commodore 64, and Apple II. | |
| R | 1993 | Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman | A language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. | |
| Ratfor | 1974 | Brian Kernighan (Bell Labs) | A hybrid of C and Fortran, implemented as a preprocessor for environments with no easy access to C compilers. | |
| Ring | 2016 | Mahmoud Samir Fayed | A general-purpose dynamic language for applications development. | |
| Ruby | 1995 | Yukihiro Matsumoto | An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose language which supports multiple programming paradigms. | |
| Rust | 2010 | Graydon Hoare (Mozilla) | A language empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software. | |
| S-Lang | 1991 | John E. Davis | A library with a powerful interpreter that provides facilities required by interactive applications such as display/screen management, keyboard input, keymaps, etc. | |
| SA-C | 2001 | Cameron Project | Single Assignment C (SA-C) is designed to be directly and intuitively translatable into circuits, including FPGAs. | |
| SAC | 1994 | (Germany) | Development spread to several institutions in Germany, Canada, and the UK. Functional language with C syntax. | |
| Seed7 | 2005 | Thomas Mertes | An extensible general-purpose language. | |
| Split-C | 1993 | ? | A parallel extension of the C language. | |
| Squirrel | 2003 | Alberto Demichelis | A light-weight scripting language. | |
| Swift | 2014 | Chris Lattner (Apple) | Swift can import any C library, optionally annotating C headers to map C types to Swift objects and import libraries as Swift modules. Swift has two-way bridging with Objective-C on platforms which support Apple's Objective-C runtime. Unlike Objective-C, Swift does not currently support C++ interoperation or exposing Swift types as C structs. | |
| Telescript | 1990 | Marc Porat | An object-oriented language. | |
| TypeScript | 2012 | Microsoft | JavaScript superset. | |
| Umple | 2008 | University of Ottawa | A language for both object-oriented programming and modeling with class diagrams and state diagrams. | |
| Unified Parallel C | 2003 | ? | An extension of the C language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines. | |
| V (Vlang) | 2019 | Alexander Medvednikov | A general-purpose statically typed compiled language for ease of use, safety, speed, and maintainable software. | |
| Zig | 2015 | Andrew Kelley | A general-purpose language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software. |
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