I searched on the open standards website, particularly the C working group homepage but only found information about C11.
They seem to have regular meetings and discuss different features and extensions, but they never actually mention a future C standard nor roadmap. It is hard to tell whether they are working on a new standard or just a Technical Corrigendum to the current standard.
I sent an email to the guy on the WG 14 contact section but I didn't expect to get an answer anytime soon, however, I did.
This is what he replied to me:
the Committee has not discussed starting work on a new revision of the
Standard. WG 14 will be meeting in Parma Italy the first part of
April, and so far there as not been any proposals for new features
that would prompt the revision process.
Thanks,
John Benito - ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22/WG 14 Convener
So I guess this is as official as it gets for now.
It appears there is discussion about the next C standard, C2x, and there are proposals as well.
You can view the charter here.
And, you can view the email list here.
At the bottom of the charter, it indicates an expected publication date of 2022.
There is C18 (https://www.iso.org/standard/74528.html) standard released in June 2018 but it only addressed flaws in C11 without introducing new language features.
A technical corrigendum is issued to correct a technical error or ambiguity. New features and extensions need to be published as an amendment or revision of the standard.
See here for an in depth description of the procedure for developing an international standard:
http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink?func=ll&objId=4230452&objAction=browse&sort=subtype
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Where do I find the current C or C++ standard documents?
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I am in the situation where I may have the opportunity to teach C to some students. The University wants to teach them pure c, not c++, to keep the advanced c++ course separate.
Since c++ is derived from c, is there an official "c rulebook" which contains all the features of c, but none of the c++ features? The reason I want to know is so I can look up what I need to teach the students.
I once saw a (2000 page?) manual on the c++ standard. Does such a thing exist for c, even if it is 20/30 years old by now?
Regards,
Ed
EDIT: I should point out I know C/C++ quite well having been teaching myself for 3 years. The only thing I don't know is what things are "officially" C and what things are "officially" C++. This is what I aim to learn so I can give the other students a better education than I could give myself.
There have been 3 official ISO C standards, published in 1990, 1999, and 2011. There have also been several "Technical Corrigenda", official documents making corrections to the standards.
The standard itself can be purchased in PDF (or paper) format from ISO or from your national standards body, such as the US ANSI. ANSI sells the C11 standard for about $30, but with strict licensing requirements. The Technical Corrigenda are available by themselves at no charge, but they're not useful without the standard. If you want to make the standard available to your class, that's probably not a practical way to do it.
But drafts of the C standards are often made available on the ISO C committee's site.
N1256 is a draft of the C99 standard with the three Technical Corrigenda merged into it. It's actually better for most purposes than the official C99 standard.
N1570 is the most recent (as far as I know, as I write this) draft of the 2011 ISO C standard, published before the ISO standard was released. There are only a few minor editorial differences between N1570 and the official standard.
There's also a small Technical Corrigendum to the C11 standard, containing a couple of fixes that aren't in either N1570 or C11: due to an oversight, the published standard didn't define the value of __STDC_VERSION__ and the optional __STDC_LIB_EXT1__ macros properly (both are 201112L).
Each standard (and draft) has a summary of the differences between it and the previous standard.
Apart from the standard (which is not really written for general programmers), Harbison & Steele's C: A Reference Manual is a very good reference. The current 5th edition covers C90 and C99, but not C11. (I don't know of any plans for a 6th edition.)
You're looking for a C standard. Since the standards bodies fund themselves through the sale of standard publications, you can't get the final version. However, there are many copies of C draft standards out there which are good enough for your purposes.
https://www.google.com/search?q=c+draft+standard+pdf
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1124.pdf
I've been reading up a lot on how C works, and I think I have an idea for how to make it better. From what I've read it seems like the standard changes from time to time, and I was wondering if there is a place I could go to submit a new idea for the next revision.
The committee's web site is http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/.
Their contact info is at http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/SC22/WG14/www/contacts.
The most recent C standard was released late last year; a draft that should be almost identical to the released standard, is N1570, or you can buy the official standard from the ANSI store, or from your national standards body.
Ideas are often discussed on the comp.std.c Usenet newsgroup; it's a good place to get feedback, but it has no official association with the committee.
Your idea will have a much better chance of being adopted if you can demonstrate existing practice, i.e., and existing C compiler that already implements it as an extension -- and if it doesn't violate the vaguely defined "spirit of C".
I found (in http://c-faq.com/ansi/avail.html) that "An electronic (PDF) copy is available on-line, for US$18, from www.ansi.org".
But at the same time, I can download it for free from http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf
Both are C standards, right ? What is the difference between two ?
The latter is a draft. Accurate and containing everything you need, but in draft form.
This is a WG14 working paper, but it reflects the consolidated
standard at the time of issue
All the documents like n1234 are draft versions of the standards. If you want the real, published versions, you have to buy them from your local standards organisation.
That's rarely necessary unless you're Microsoft, Borland/Unprized/Enchilada (or whatever they call themselves nowadays), IBM or some other compiler writer. Normal people get by quite adequately on the late-edition drafts just fine.
The latest draft, dubbed C1X, and approved for publication, is http://www.open-std.org/JTC1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1548.pdf. This is probably as close to the next standard as you will be able to get without paying for the formalized version.
Better to take that version, since n1256 missed several clarifications and corrections.
I'm wondering about the difference between what is defined by the several standards of the C language and the things that every compilers implements in a different way from the others, i want to really understand what the official specs of the C language are: there are some official docs?
I'm looking for technical stuff, not a thread on the internet, some good pdfs maybe; something that can describe everything happens with the memory management, the allocation, the lenght and the encoding of the variables, etc etc ...
I have the official manual from K&R but it's not really about what i am interested to, it's more on the "programmer side" i want something more technical and affermative.
PS
the C language have an official website for reference?
Check this
"Obtaining the Standard
Neither the Standard nor its amendments are available free of charge, although its drafts, rationales, technical corrigenda (TCs) and defect report responses are.
The Standard can be purchased in hardcopy and/or downloadable digital format from national affiliates as described on the WG14 website. Two such national bodies are ANSI - through its eStandards Store - and SAI Global (originally Standards Australia) which sells all of the ISO C Standard publications. One international source is Techstreet.
Listed below are direct links to pages for purchase or free download of the Standard, its TCs, amendments, drafts, rationales and defect report responses for each version of the Standard. The set of documents is comprehensive whereas the list of sources obviously is not."
Tried to add this as a comment but the URL would not take.
Try: http://www.deitel.com/Default.aspx?tabid=204 for details on C. I also suggest you dig up GNU's big document on C as they do some things differently and it can be important to understand GNUs way of doing things. http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/.
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I'm looking for the documentation of all the syntax and built-in functions in C, but I can't find any site online which seems like an ultimate official source of standard C knowledge.
Apart from the famous book by Kernighan and Ritchie, isn't there any online C specification? Maybe there is, and I don't know how to find it. Or maybe the problem is that I don't exactly know what I'm looking for.
You can obtain a PDF copy of the C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999) from ANSI (and other fine standards organizations) for your private use for a modest fee - I believe it was 18 USD when I bought mine. Having that available is invaluable to me. But if you find a copy in public, then it is contraband.
You can find final committee drafts and current working documents of the C (C0x) Standard Committee at the JTC1, SC22, WG14 web site at the Open Standards Organization. (That's Joint Technical Committee 1, Sub-Committee 22, Working Group 14, I believe).
There is also a hardback book 'The C Standard: Incorporating Technical Corrigendum 1' (also including the Rationale) available for a slightly less modest 85 USD or thereabouts.
One of the best books about C is 'C: A Reference Manual' in its fifth edition. However, you asked for 'ultimate official source of standard C knowledge', and the only 'official' such source is the C standard, plus its corrigenda.
See also the material at http://www.coding-guidelines.com/ and http://c0x.coding-guidelines.com/.
There is this online website devdocs
They have multiple API documentations which are well organized. It is free and open-source.
For c doc click this link http://devdocs.io/c/
The official C99 standard is available for purchase from your national standards body; however, in practice everyone reads the draft with post-1999 corrections/amendments included, which you can download for free:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1256.pdf
Strictly speaking, the C standard is not available for free. You need to purchase an electronic copy from http://www.ansi.org/ or http://www.iso.org.
However, you can download a free draft version from the Open Standards Organization's website - this is as good as or better than the official standard itself. It incorporates information from the ISO C99 standard plus three Technical Corrigenda, all of which are official ISO documents.
More info here: http://c-faq.com/ansi/avail.html
Is there something like the official C documentation?
The most official documentation is the ISO standard, to which compilers are written and are expected to interpret correctly.
C99 Standard
Here's the latest Committee draft on the C99 Standard, last updated April 12, 2011:
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1570.pdf
I'll try to keep it up to date with the latest version as I can.
Kernighan & Ritchie
I also found K&R's text, second edition, here: http://www.ime.usp.br/~pf/Kernighan-Ritchie/C-Programming-Ebook.pdf
However, I'd use the -Wall flag when compiling the examples in the book so that you don't get led too far astray by the age of the text.
C is an ISO standardised language. Current specification is ISO/IEC 9899:1999 standard a.k.a. C99.
You can refer GNU C documentation at https://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-c-manual/gnu-c-manual.html
Specifically, this manual aims to document:
The 1989 ANSI C standard, commonly known as “C89”
The 1999 ISO C standard, commonly known as “C99”, to the extent that C99 is implemented by GCC
The current state of GNU extensions to standard C
There're various C standard specifications.
See C's history on wikipedia for example.
When we talk about standard C these days, we mostly refer to the ANSI C Standard.
Here's a link to the standard in textform:
http://flash-gordon.me.uk/ansi.c.txt
Look at The New C Standard: An Economic and Cultural Commentary.
If what you want is the documentation for the standard library functions, then P.J. Plauger's "The Standard C Library" http://www.amazon.com/Standard-C-Library-P-J-Plauger/dp/0131315099/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1290273108&sr=1-1 is the best reference. It's got pretty extensive annotation and comentary on the why and how of the standard.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fw5abdx6.aspx
The "C Language Reference" describes the C programming language as implemented in Microsoft C. The book's organization is based on the ANSI C standard with additional material on the Microsoft extensions to the ANSI C standard.