Due to the success of the C programming language and some of its derivatives, C-family programming languages span a large variety of programming paradigms, conceptual models, and run-time environments. These languages are described by notable programming sources as being C-like, being dialects of C, having C-like syntax, or otherwise being similar to C.
Such languages are likely to share some syntax and basic language constructs with C, such as semicolon-terminated statements, curly-brace-delimited code blocks, parentheses-delimited parameters, and infix-notated arithmetical and logical expressions. The use of curly brackets ({}
) to denote blocks of code has led to the name curly-bracket languages being sometimes used.[1]
Language | Year started | Created by (at) | Brief description, relationship to C | References |
---|---|---|---|---|
Agora | 1993 | ? | 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; it was published in 1995 but eventually abandoned. It provided substantial language support for concurrent programming. | [2] |
Amiga E | 1993 | Wouter van Oortmerssen | A combination of many features from a number of languages, but follows the original C programming language most closely in terms of 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. | [3] |
Axum | 2009 | Microsoft | A domain specific concurrent programming language, based on the Actor model. | |
BCPL | 1966 | Martin Richards | A procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language. Precursor to C. | [4] |
C | 1969-1973 | Dennis Ritchie (Bell Labs) | Was an enhancement of Ken Thompson's B language. | [1] |
C shell/tcsh | 1978 | Bill Joy (UC Berkeley) | Scripting language and standard Unix shell. | |
C* | 1987 | Thinking Machines | Object-oriented, data-parallel superset of ANSI C. | |
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. | [5][1] |
C-- | 1997 | Simon Peyton Jones, Norman Ramsey | Generated mainly by compilers for very high-level languages. | |
Cg | 2002 | Nvidia | Based on the C programming 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. | [6][7] |
Chapel | 2009 | Cray Inc. | Aims to improve the programmability of parallel computers in general and the Cray Cascade system in particular. | |
Charm | 1996 | ? | An object oriented computer programming 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 programming 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 programming 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 programming language for the .NET Framework. | [1] |
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 programming 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 programming language for the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM). | |
Handel-C | 1996 | Oxford University Computing Laboratory | A high-level programming 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. | [8][9] |
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. | [1] |
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.[10] Standardized as ECMAScript. | [11][12] |
Limbo | 1995 | Limbo succeeded Alef and is used in Inferno as Alef was used in Plan9. | ||
LSL | 2003 | ? | Created for the Second Life virtual world by Linden Lab. | |
Lite-C | 2007 | Atari Inc | A programming 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 a variety of purposes. | |
Neko | 2005 | Nicolas Cannasse (Motion-Twin) | A high-level dynamically typed programming language. | |
Nemerle | 2003 | Kamil Skalski, Michał Moskal, Prof. Leszek Pacholski, Paweł Olszta at Wrocław University | A general-purpose high-level statically typed programming 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 programming language designed to embody the structuring concepts and execution model of TinyOS. TinyOS is an event-driven operating system designed for sensor network nodes that have very limited resources. | [13][14] |
Newsqueak | 1988 | Rob Pike | A concurrent programming language for writing application software with interactive graphical user interfaces. Newsqueak's syntax and semantics are influenced by the C language, but its approach to concurrency was inspired by CSP. | [15][16] |
Nim | 2008 | Andreas Rumpf | An imperative, multi-paradigm, compiled programming 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 programming 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. | [17] |
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 limitations, such as the maximum number of subroutines and variables allowed. Later replaced with NXC, an enhanced version created for the Mindstorms NXT platform. | [18] |
Oak | 1991 | James Gosling (Sun Microsystems) | A programming language created initially for Sun Microsystems set-top box project. The language 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 variations on the OpenStep FoundationKit. | [5] |
OpenCL C | 2009 | Apple, Khronos Group | OpenCL specifies a modified subset of the C programming 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. | [1] |
PHP | 1995 | Rasmus Lerdorf | Widely used as a server-side scripting language. C-like syntax. | [19] |
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 programming language for MS-DOS, Commodore 64, and Apple II. | |
R | 1993 | Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman | A programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. | [20] |
Ratfor | 1974 | Brian Kernighan (Bell Labs) | A hybrid of C and Fortran, implemented as a preprocessor for environments without easy access to C compilers. | |
Ring | 2016 | Mahmoud Samir Fayed | A general-purpose dynamic programming language for applications development. | [21][22][23] |
Ruby | 1995 | Yukihiro Matsumoto | An interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming 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. | [24] |
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. | [25] |
Seed7 | 2005 | Thomas Mertes | An extensible general-purpose programming language. | |
Split-C | 1993 | ? | A parallel extension of the C programming 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[26] and import libraries as Swift modules.[27] 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 programming language. | |
TypeScript | 2012 | Microsoft | Superset of JavaScript. | |
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 programming language designed for high-performance computing on large-scale parallel machines. | |
V (Vlang) | 2019 | Alexander Medvednikov | A general-purpose statically typed compiled programming language for ease of use, safety, speed, and maintainable software. | [28] |
Zig | 2015 | Andrew Kelley | A general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software. | [29] |
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List of C-family programming languages.
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