Question: Give some distinctive features of 'C' which states it to be a structured programming. What are the differences between a low level, a middle level and a high-level language?
Answer:
C is called a structured programming language because you can solve a large problem by dividing the problem into smaller structural blocks (function) each of which handles a particular responsibility. Even a bigger structural block like a function can have smaller inner structural blocks like decisions and loops.
Structured programming came into picture after the assembly language. Structural support was not there in the assembly languages. Programming languages used to use goto and jump type of statements to hop between different logical units. A bigger program used to be unorganized and difficult to understand.
Some Structure features in C
The language whose design is governed by the circuitry and the structure of the machine is known as the Machine language. This language is difficult to learn and use. It is specific to a given computer and is different for different computers i.e. these languages are machine-dependent. These languages have been designed to give a better machine efficiency, i.e. faster program execution. Such languages are also known as Low Level Languages.
They are easy to learn and programs may be written in these languages with much less effort. However, the computer cannot understand them and they need to be translated into machine language with the help of other programs known as Compilers or Translators. Like C++, Java, Python
It bridges gap between machine understandable machine level language and more conventional high-level language. This programming helps in writing system programming as well as application programming. Because C language has both the feature of high level and low-level language so it is often called middle level language.