C is a procedural general purpose programming language developed in the early 1970s. The language focuses on execution speed, simplicity, and memory management. The main use of the C language is in low level programming, such as operating systems or drivers.
C++ is an object oriented general purpose programming language developed in the late 1970s. The language is similar to C, but with new functionalities.
The table below outlines the main differences between C and C++.
| C | C++ |
|---|---|
| C is a procedural language. | C++ is an object-oriented language. |
| C contains 32 keywords. | C++ contains 63 keywords. |
| .c is the file extension. | .cpp is the file extension. |
| Uses calloc(), malloc(), and free() for memory allocation and deallocation. | Uses the new and delete operators for memory allocation and deallocation. |
| Does not support access modifiers. | Supports access modifiers. |
| No additional security features. | Secures code through encapsulation and data hiding. |
| Code separated into functional blocks. | Code separated into object blocks. |
| No support for inline functions. | Supports inline functions. |
| Suitable for low level programming. | Suitable for high-level programming. |