Diamond like carbon (DLC) is a metastable form of amorphous carbon with a unique combination of desirable mechanical, electrical and optical properties. It is a good candidate for the tribological applications due to its low friction coefficient and high wear resistance. The key property of DLC- its sp3 bonding - confers on DLC many of the properties on diamond itself, like mechanical hardness, chemical and electrochemical inertness and wide band gap. Raman spectroscopy is a relative simple and nondestructive tool for studying bonding configuration of carbon material and can be used as a fingerprint for identification. This article provides a systematic review on the Raman spectroscopy of carbon materials, in particular, diamond-like carbon films. It covers the curve fitting and decomposition of Raman spectra, and the effects of local bonding structure, substrate, and excitation energy, etc., on the spectra.