a good C book
 

Hello friends,
I *really* dont want to flame a war here. But it will be helpful for me if you can suggest a good book for me.
I am not a novice programmer, using fortan for ~10 years now. But from such higher level language, was never exposed to terms like malloc or buffer :( .
I have a K&R with me, but felt descriptions are too short for these new ideas.
I tried my hand with dummies, but that looks like kids play. Today i have collected a book called "C in a nutshell". But thought it will be wiser to ask wiser people.
I am not looking for the *best* book in the market. Just a moderately helpful one. Or even, if the nutshell worth a try(its from O'Reilly's; by Prinz & Crawford)

Re: a good C book
 

Rudra Banerjee <bnrj.rudra@gmail.com> writes:
> Hello friends,
> I *really* dont want to flame a war here. But it will be helpful for
> me if you can suggest a good book for me. I am not a novice
> programmer, using fortan for ~10 years now. But from such higher level
> language, was never exposed to terms like malloc or buffer :( . I
> have a K&R with me, but felt descriptions are too short for these new
> ideas. I tried my hand with dummies, but that looks like kids
> play. Today i have collected a book called "C in a nutshell". But
> thought it will be wiser to ask wiser people. I am not looking for
> the *best* book in the market. Just a moderately helpful one. Or even,
> if the nutshell worth a try(its from O'Reilly's; by Prinz & Crawford)

Question 18.10 of the comp.lang.c FAQ, http://www.c-faq.com/, has some
book recommendations, though some of them may be out of date.

Avoid any books written by Schildt.

Harbison & Steele's "C: A Reference Manual", now in its 5th edition, is
a very good reference. It's not a tutorial.

The FAQ recommends King's "C: A Modern Approach"; I haven't read it myself.

The ISO C standard is the definitive reference to the language,
but probably not good for learning (unless your mind is at least
as twisted as mine). Publicly available drafts for the C99 and
C11 standards, respectively, are:

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg...docs/n1256.pdf
http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg...docs/n1570.pdf

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc.
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

Re: a good C book
 

Rudra Banerjee <bnrj.rudra@gmail.com> wrote:

> I *really* dont want to flame a war here. But it will be helpful
> for me if you can suggest a good book for me.
> I am not a novice programmer, using fortan for ~10
> years now. But from such higher level language, was never
> exposed to terms like malloc or buffer :( .

In C the malloc() function does some of what the Fortran ALLOCATE
statement does. More specifically, the form that allocates for
pointer variables.

Sometimes you can read data directly to where you want it to go,
but sometimes you have to read it in somewhere else first.

In Fortran, this is sometimes done reading into a CHARACTER
variable, then using internal I/O to extract the data.
The CHARACTER variable is then the buffer.

Otherwise, 10 years of Fortran should make learning most of C
pretty easy. It helps much if you have a little experience with
the assembler language (not necessarily using an assembler)
before learning C. To get used to thinking about data in
terms of its address helps much.

-- glen

Re: a good C book
 

On Thu, 2013-01-31, Rudra Banerjee wrote:
....
> I am not looking for the *best* book in the market. Just a
> moderately helpful one. Or even, if the nutshell worth a try(its from
> O'Reilly's; by Prinz & Crawford)

You bought it; aren't you going to read it?

I haven't read a book on C for 15 years, but AIUI the "Nutshell"
series are high-quality books for smart people who aren't novices in
the general area. Seems like a good description of a Fortran
programmer.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .

Re: a good C book
 

Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> writes:

> Harbison & Steele's "C: A Reference Manual", now in its 5th edition, is
> a very good reference.

That's my favorite book about C. Clear writing. Tells it like it is.

I believe Steele also wrote the Common Lisp manual and the Java manual.

> ...It's not a tutorial.

Well, yeah, but for someone with 10 years programming experience,
I think it's a good tool for learning.

- Bob

Re: a good C book
 

I'd have a look at Deitel's C - How to Program (2001) 3 Ed
It is inexpensive and comprehensive.

Re: a good C book
 

"Daniel W. Rouse Jr." <dwrousejr@nethere.comNOSPAM> writes:
> "Rudra Banerjee" <bnrj.rudra@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:badd8f48-ea73-4b34-8d91-e8aaa4806bf4@googlegroups.com...
>> Hello friends,
>> I *really* dont want to flame a war here. But it will be helpful for
>> me if you can suggest a good book for me.
>> I am not a novice programmer, using fortan for ~10 years now. But
>> from such higher level language, was never exposed to terms like
>> malloc or buffer :( .
>> I have a K&R with me, but felt descriptions are too short for these
>> new ideas.
>> I tried my hand with dummies, but that looks like kids play. Today i
>> have collected a book called "C in a nutshell". But thought it will
>> be wiser to ask wiser people.
>> I am not looking for the *best* book in the market. Just a
>> moderately helpful one. Or even, if the nutshell worth a try(its
>> from O'Reilly's; by Prinz & Crawford)
>
> Anything by Herbert Schildt, I would say.
>
> Often times, Schildt's books are maligned because they occasionally
> use Microsoft-specific extensions as opposed to strict ANSI C;
> however, books by Schildt are the fastest way to get up to speed
> without being riddled with distracting footnotes or more on this later
> type of explanations. In Schildt's books, you'll be writing programs
> quickly and the explanations are clear enough without being overly
> verbose. They tend to be better than the Crash course, or Dummies, or
> In 24 hours type of books in terms of completeness of coverage.

Please, no, not Schildt!

The general consensus seems to be that Schildt's books on C are written
in a very engaging and easy to follow style, and describe a language
that differs substantially from C. (I have no strong opinion on his
writing style myself.) If you know the language well, you'll almost
certainly find a serious error on any given page. That is *not* an
exaggeration.

See <http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/schildt.html> for a review by
C.D.W. Feather of his book "The Annotated Annotated C Standard", and
<http://www.seebs.net/c/c_tcn4e.html> for a review by Peter Seebach of
"C: The Complete Reference".

At the very least, read those reviews before you consider buying
anything with Schildt's name on it.

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst-u@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Working, but not speaking, for JetHead Development, Inc.
"We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this."
-- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister"

Re: a good C book
 

On 01/31/2013 07:11 PM, Daniel W. Rouse Jr. wrote:
....
> Often times, Schildt's books are maligned because they occasionally use
> Microsoft-specific extensions as opposed to strict ANSI C;

No, they are maligned because they contain so many mistakes, some of
them serious, and also by Schildt's refusal to acknowledge and correct
those mistakes. That some of those mistakes take the form of being
accurate statements about Microsoft's implementation of C, that Schildt
incorrectly describes as if they were true of every implementation of C,
is a relatively minor aspect of what's wrong with his book.
--
James Kuyper

Re: a good C book
 

Rudra Banerjee <bnrj.rudra@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am not a novice programmer, using fortan for ~10 years now.
> I have a K&R with me, but felt descriptions are too short
> for these new ideas.

I also learned C after some 10+ years Fortran experience
(and another ~5 with various assembler languages).
For me, K&R was far-and-away the very best book
to get up-and-running with C. I'd suggest you give it
another try. And, of course, you have to actually write some
programs. You can't learn any language just reading a book,
no more than you could learn to play a piano just reading a book.
In both cases you need to sit down at a keyboard.
--
John Forkosh ( mailto: j@f.com where j=john and f=forkosh )

Re: a good C book
 

While I agree that K&R is 'the' book to master, I wanted to point to
this: http://www.mixsoftware.com/product/powerc.htm

Over the years I saw many recomendations to this package, not because
of the Power-C compiler itself, but because of the C tutorial book
that comes with it. (I have not personally used it.)
--
Roberto Waltman

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