C vs C++ Comparison: best difference & similarities between C and C++

In the programming world, C and C++ languages are the oldest and one of the most popular languages. C and C++ have known as a base for several current languages.

The main objective of this post is to show the difference between C vs C++. Let’s check out about both languages before understanding the difference between them.

About C and C++

C was first designed by Dennis Ritchie from 1969 to 1973 to execute on UNIX operating system. It is a general-purpose programming language and it is extremely flexible, popular, and simple. C is the base of all programming languages. I

If you are good at C, you can easily understand or grasp the knowledge of other programming languages. After getting inspired by Simula and C, Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++ in 1979.

Founders of both languages operated at Bell Laboratories of AT&T. C++ language was inspired by C. In simple; we can call C++ as a subset of C.

Both languages have the same memory model, same compilation, syntax, and code structure. Many programs of C can also run in the C++ compiler.



The key difference between C vs C++:

Data abstraction

In the C programming language, data abstractions are of low level. Data abstraction hiding all their background detain and displaying the only important information. As compared to C, language C++ provides high-level data abstraction.



Programming paradigm

The C programming language is a middle-level language that bridges between high-level language and machine level language. It was essentially created for writing operating system parts.

For compilation, it follows a top-down approach. C language programs starts with main() function. C language doesn’t support objects and classes as it is a procedural language. It doesn’t support features such as inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation.

Polymorphism is defined as the capability of an object to take several forms. Inheritance means the tendency of a child object to inherit the properties of its parents. Encapsulation used to bind data and functions together.



C++ programming language is recognized as the high-level programing language. It supports both object-oriented programming and procedural language paradigm. C++ supports both objects and classes.

C++ is an advanced object-oriented programming language. It carries features like inheritance, polymorphism, and encapsulation. Here in C++, functions, and data can be encapsulated collectively in the object form. In C++, data are safer; it’s because of encapsulations.



Namespaces

In C++, the Namespace is an additional feature, but this feature is not present in C language. It prevents name collision. Declarations of the namespace can be made only at the global scope.



Memory allocation

In both languages, dynamic allocation is different. For memory allocation in C language, we use calloc() and malloc() functions, and for deallocation, we use free(). When we are using C++, for memory allocation and deallocation. We use several sets of operators like Delete and New.



Reference variables

C++ provides many other things, but C doesn’t like C only supports pointers, but C++ supports both reference variables and pointers. We have only one type of data in C, but in C++, we have user-defined as well as built-in data types.



Inline functions

The new version of C supports inline functions, but the first version of C doesn’t support them. To speed up the execution it normally works with macros. C++ language supports inline functions as well as macros.



Exception handling

C language doesn’t allow direct handling of exceptions. But in C++ it does with its catch and try blocks. We have only data members in C structures, whereas C++ has both functions and data members.

First image: C vs C++ Parameters

Second image: C vs C++ Parameters

Third image: C vs C++ Parameters

Conclusion

In this blog, we have explained the main differences between C vs C++ programming languages in terms of several features. As we have seen, several features are restricted to C++. C++ is a subset of C, and it supports various features of C.

These programming languages are rare in modern software industries. But these languages are the backbone for many other programming languages like- java, python, NumPy, etc.

Therefore one should have knowledge of C and C++. Most importantly, it helps new programmers to understand complex computer science theories easily.

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