Basic concepts

This section provides definitions for the specific terminology and the concepts used when describing the C programming language.

A C program is a sequence of text files (typically header and source files) that contain declarations. They undergo translation to become an executable program, which is executed when the OS calls its main function (unless it is itself the OS or another freestanding

Certain words in a C program have special meaning, they are keywords. Others can be used as identifiers, which may be used to identify objects, functions, struct, union, or enumeration tags, their members, typedef names, labels, or macros

Each identifier (other than macro) is only valid within a part of the program called its scope and belongs to one of four kinds of name spaces. Some identifiers have linkage

Definitions of functions include sequences of statements and declarations, some of which include expressions

Declarations and expressions create, destroy, access, and manipulate objects. Each object, function, and expression in C is associated with a type

See also

C++ documentation for Basic concepts