C is an old language, but still very popular and relevant, especially while creating performance-intensive applications. It hasn’t remained unchanged since its inception, the language has been standardized and updated, but the most significant update to come yet has been in development under the name C 0x for quite a while.
C 0x was intended to be finalized before 2010, with the x standing for the year in 2000 in which it is released, however, this is 2011 and the final standard that emerges from C 0x will ths rightfully be called C 11.
ISO has just declared “unanimous approval” for the new standard, and it is likely to be published soon as “ISO/IEC 14882:2011(E) Programming Languages — C , Third Edition”.
The new standard aims to evolve the language while making things such as multithreading simpler. It even has a provision for garbage collection; but that is dependent on the specific implementation of the standard, and it not enforced by the standard.
For those who are familiar with C , a list of changes and improvements compared to the previous version can be found on its Wikipedia page. For those looking for a more practical look at C 0x, the popular free open source GNU Compiler Collection has been implementing C 0x features while the standard was being developed. You can see what all it supports here.