Every once in a while I receive an email from a fellow programmer asking me what tutorials I used for C and how I learned it. Hence, I thought it may help a few people to list here the best things to read about C. If you know of other gems, please email me or add a comment at the bottom of the page. Bad C readings:- Im going to start with the things I didnt take too seriously: Internet tutorials, blogs and almost anything brought by Google (yes, it includes this article). I usually considered those sources unreliable and potentially harmful. Like a lot of people in the industry I used to Google way too often. Overtime I found the illusion of speed and the inaccuracy of the answers to be counter-productive. No website is as good as a good book. And no good book is as good as a disassembly output. Excellent C readings:- C Programming Language (aka: K&R) The classic and first book you should read about C. It will be easy to pick up as it is a 272 pages, 386 grams book. Short and full of well explained code samples it was written by the fathers of the language Kernighan and Ritchie themselves. It is all you need to know about C…for the first few weeks. It is fun to read, keeps things short and will get you going in no time. You will probably skip the Annex A (about obscure things like promotions, decaying, conversions and other useless things) and Annex B about the C Library…and I think its ok for the beginning. This book makes C appears very small and simple so it is very encouraging to learn. If you keep on practicing and learning you will soon hit some strange situations. Like for example: unsigned int ui_one = 1 ; signed int i_one = 1 ; signed short s_minus_one = -1 ; if( s_minus_one > ui_one) printf(-1 > 1 \n); if( s_minus_one < i_one) printf(-1 < 1 \n); #./run # # -1 > 1 # -1 < 1 In the previous code sample, due to integral promotion -1 was once evaluated to be greater than 1 and then smaller than 1. C has plenty of case like this when the language cannot longer do stuff for you. There are also plenty of subtleties: extern void foo(void); void (*f)(); f = &foo; // Valid f = foo; // Valid too ! (syntactic sugar) f(); // Calls f (*f)(); // Calls f too ! (syntactic sugar) Or the array/pointer/decaying special cases... int array[] = {0,1,2,3,4} ; int* pointer = array; if (sizeof array == sizeof pointer) printf(This will never be printed !!); if (sizeof(int*) == sizeof &array[0]) printf(This will be printed !!\n); if (&array[2] - &array[0] == 8) printf(This will never be printed either, result is 2 not 8!!); When you hit the point where you understand that you actually know very little about C (and that the Annex A is way too slim), it will be time to pickup the second book. Expert C Programming:- This book is fantastic because it will bring your attention to what happens under the hood in a very entertaining way. Through numerous bug anecdotes and trivia (mostly NASA based) the reader will be introduced again to integral promotion, subscripting, decaying and many other C marvels. This book is so captivating that you will probably read the 353 pages within a night and be dissapointed it was so short. Now willing to do deep and become a good C programmer, you should acquire the last book you will ever need: C: A Reference Manual: This is the ultimate C/C89/C99 book. The true cold boring truth that you will deal with from now on. You can put K&R and ECP back on the shelves and keep this one besides the screen monitor. Anything you want to know is there. The C Standard library: The three books mentioned remain the best in my opinion ... but what about the C Standard Library ? The best book to master the C Library is with no doubt The Standard C Library by P.J. Plauger : Not only it comes with an implementation of the entire library, it also discuss design decisions and provides historical perspectives (ever wondered why C performed all floating operations in double ? Or how errno came to existence ? This book has the answers. It covers in details the 15 modules of C89: assert.h, ctype.h, errno.h, float.h, limits.h, locale.h, setjmp.h, signal.h, stdarg.h, stddef.h, time.h, and discuss at length the big four: stdio.h, stdlib.h, string.h and math.h . The only two big things missings are the coverage of C99 integral types (intypes.h and stdint.h) which are paramount in order to write portablecode and C11s threads.h which is equaly important considering the emergence of multi-core CPUs. For now I havent found anything better but I welcome readers suggestions. Try to maintain an healthy life and read some fun stuff for a change ;) ! https://kalyancstuff.blogspot
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 14:18:10 +0000
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