C syntax

The syntax of the C programming language, the rules governing writing of software in the language, is designed to allow for programs that are extremely terse, have a close relationship with the resulting object code, and yet provide relatively high-level data abstraction. The development of this syntax was a major milestone in the history of the computer industry as it was the first widely successful high-level language for operating-system development.

C syntax makes use of the maximal munch principle.

The C language represents numbers in three forms: integral, real and complex. This distinction reflects similar distinctions in the instruction set architecture of most central processing units. Integral data types store numbers in the set of integers, while real and complex numbers represent numbers (or pair of numbers) in the set of real numbers in floating point form.

All C integer types have signed and unsigned variants. If signed or unsigned is not specified explicitly, in most circumstances signed is assumed. However, for historic reasons plain char is a type distinct from both signed char and unsigned char. It may be a signed type or an unsigned type, depending on the compiler and the character set (C guarantees that members of the C basic character set have positive values). Also, bit field types specified as plain int may be signed or unsigned, depending on the compiler.

C's integer types come in different fixed sizes, capable of representing various ranges of numbers. The type char occupies exactly one byte (the smallest addressable storage unit), which is typically 8 bits wide. (Although char can represent any of C's "basic" characters, a wider type may be required for international character sets.) Most integer types have both signed and unsigned varieties, designated by the signed and unsigned keywords. Signed integer types may use a two's complement, ones' complement, or sign-and-magnitude representation. In many cases, there are multiple equivalent ways to designate the type; for example, signed short int and short are synonymous.

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