The designers of C took great pains to ensure that the language did not insert any roadblocks to performance. The result is a language that takes care of the grunt work of mapping variable names to memory locations, handling loops and IF statements without requiring explicit GOTOs, and passing parameters to functions, without getting in the way of anything else. C has been characterized as a thin wrapper around assembly language.6 This could be meant as both a compliment and insult, but it perfectly fit the needs of the transition from software running on mainframes to software running on PCs,
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