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== C programming language ==
▲Depending on what one means by high vs. low level language, C is sometimes classified as one or the other.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jindal |first1=G. |first2=P. |last2=Khurana |first3=T. |last3=Goel |date=January 2013 |title=Comparative study of C, Objective C, C++ programming language |journal=International Journal of Advanced Trends in Computer Science and Engineering |volume=2 |issue=1 |page=203}}</ref> The syntax of C is inherently higher level than that of an assembly language since an assembly language is syntactically platform dependent whereas the C syntax is platform independent. C does support low-level programming {{endash}} directly accessing computer hardware {{endash}} but other languages, sometimes considered higher level than C, also can access hardware directly. With C, developers might need to handle relatively low-level aspects that other languages abstract (provide higher level support for) such as memory management and pointer arithmetic. But, C can encode abstractions that hide details such as hardware access, memory management and pointer arithmetic such that at least part of a C [[codebase]] might be as conceptually high-level as if constructed in any other language. Whether C is classified as high or low level language is contended, but it is higher level than assembly languages (especially syntactically) and is lower level than many other languages in some aspects.
Although C is not architecture independent, it can be used to write code that is [[cross-platform]] even though doing so can be technically challenging. An aspect of C that facilitates cross-platform development is the [[C standard library]] that provides “an [[interface (computing)|interface]] to system-dependent objects that is itself relatively system independent”.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kernighan |first=B. |author-link1=Brian Kernighan |last2=Ritchie |first2=D. |author-link2=Dennis Ritchie |date=1988 |title=The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition |page=163}}</ref>
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