Hello World program in C language

Let’s begin writing with our first program i.e Hello World.

Type the following code in your editor or IDE:

// hello.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
   printf("Hello, World!\n");
   return 0;
}

And, now if you are in IDE you can click Run button (in Windows) else run the hello.c C program(in macOS or Linux) as

$ gcc hello.c -o hello  # compile the C program

# run the compiled program as
$ ./hello
Hello, World!

Understanding Code

  • #include is a preprocessor command that tells the compiler to include the contents of stdio.h file which provide standard input and output operations.
  • The stdio.h file contains functions such as scanf() and printf() to take input and display output respectively.
  • main() function is the starting point of execution.
  • printf() is a library function to print formatted output to the screen.
  • The return 0; statement is the “Exit status” of the program which represents successful execution. return 1; represent failure in execution.