Middle-level language in Computer
The middle-level language lies in between the low level and high-level language. C language is the middle-level language. By using the C language, the user is capable of doing the system programming for writing operating system as well as application programming. The Java and C++ are also middle-level languages.
The middle-level programming language interacts with the abstraction layer of a computer system. It serves as the bridge between the raw hardware and programming layer of the computer system. The middle-level language is also known as the intermediate programming language and pseudo-language.
The middle-level language is an output of any programming language, which is known as source code. The source code is written in a high-level language. This kind of middle-level language is designed to improve the translated code before the processor executes it.
The improvement schedule helps to adjust the source code according to the computational framework of the target machine of various languages. The processor of CPU does not directly execute the source code of the middle-level language. It needs interpretation into binary code for the execution.
The C language is the middle-level language because it has only 32 keywords: it takes less translation time like low-level language. We can do many works of low-level language through C language. There is a different type of data types used in the C language. The four common data types which are: char, int, float, double, etc. Each data type plays a unique role in the C language.
We can access hardware devices easily with the help of the C language. The C language also binds the gap between machine level language and high-level language. In 1972, the C language was used to create the UNIX operating system.
The C language is the middle-level language due to its features which are given below:
1) Fast and Efficient
The program execution of C is high-speed and efficient due to its variety of data type and powerful operators. The C language directly converts the code into machine language and run it. The C language is more optimized, and the performance of C is better than other higher languages.
2) Rich library functions
There are inbuilt library functions in C language which are grouped and placed in a common place, known as the library. Every library function in C language can perform the specific operations.
These library functions are created by those persons who designed and invented the compiler of C language. All the C Standard library functions are declared in many header files which are saved as file_name.h. We can also use these library functions to get the pre-defined output.
3) Portable
The portability of C source code means that we can move our C language source code at any machine without modifying the single line of code. The C language is not tied to any hardware or system. It is hardware-independent language or platform-independent.
4) Modularity
Modular programming is the process of subdividing the computer program into separate subprograms. The module is the separate software component. It can be used in a variety of applications and functions with other elements of the system.
5) Easy to extend
The C programming language can extend itself. We can easily extend the code of the C language. The keywords are those words whose meaning is already defined by the compiler in C language.
The C keywords are also known as reserve words. There are some keywords which are very useful in C language such as const, static, void, typedef, etc. The constant variable must be initialized at the time of declaration. Const keyword of C language is also used with the pointers.
6) Variety of data type and dominant operators
Every variable in C language has associated data type. It needs a different amount of memory. The data types have some specific operations which can perform over it. All the data types have different ranges up to which they can store numbers. The operators in C language allow us to perform a different kind of operations on operands. There are mainly three types of operators exist in C language:
- Unary Operator.
- Binary Operator.
- Ternary Operator.
The operators are the foundation for any programming language; C language has a wide range of operators to perform different operations. The Unary arithmetic operators are of two types: Increment operators and decrements operators. The Binary operators can be divided into five categories, which are given below:
- Arithmetic Operator
- Relational Operator
- Logical Operator
- Bit-wise Operator
- Assignment Operator
The ternary operator is also known as the conditional operator. The arithmetic operators are addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, modulus, etc.
7) Recursion
The C language supports the recursion feature. The recursion process is the repeating process to call itself again and again in a similar way. The programmers need to be careful when they are using recursion to define an exit condition from the function. Otherwise, the loop will go into a finite situation.
8) Structured
The C language is also known as structured programming language because we can solve the massive problems by using this language. The C language divides the problem into small modules called functions or procedures. Those programs which explain the whole problem is the collection of such functions.
9) Simple
The C language is mainly developed for system programming to write the operating system. It is also used for the compiler development. The C language has a simple set of keywords and low-level access to memory.
10) Extensible
The C language can extend the compiler and run time environment. We can split the program into such named blocks, which are known as functions. The program in C is written in three structure: decisions, sequences, and loops.
11) Mid-level
The C language is also known as the middle-level language because we can do system programming as well as application programming in this language. We can develop the operating system with the help of the C language.
12) Pointers
The pointers play a crucial role in C language. These are used to store and manage the addresses of dynamically allocated blocks in memory of the computer system. There is the null pointer in C, and its value is zero. The size of any pointer is 2 byte for the 16-bit compiler. The C pointer is always initialized to null; if a pointer in C is assigned to null, it means that pointer is pointing to nothing.