Timeless. Simply Essential. Simply the Best. | C Programming Language (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall...

The definitive C reference bok | C Programming Language (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Software) | Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie

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	• C Programming Language (2nd Edition) (Prentice Hall Software) Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie Prentice Hall PTR, 1988 - 274 pages average customer review:based on 253 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The defacto book on C

This book is extremely well written but it moves very fast. It is a short read so in order to get the most out of it you'll need to read then re-read much of it. Also, actually doing the examples and excercises will get you that much closer to knowing the C language intimately.

I know that this book was written a long time ago and the fact that it still holds up is pretty amazing. It is somewhat dated in terms of the typography and layout in fact it's not the easiest book to read visually.

If you are brand new to programming you'll definately want to start out with a different book. This book is not a friendly intro to programming but more of an expert essay on the C language.

Two things that really bother me: This book has some Unix based exercises toward the end so you'll need to get a copy of Cygwin (a unix environment that runs on Windows) if you are running a Windows based operating system to complete the excercizes. The next thing which bothers me even more is there is almost little to no material on dynamic memory. It skims over the use of keywords like "malloc" and some of the examples which use dynamic memory don't handle memory cleanup at all. In fact there's almost no mention of cleaning up after yourself after you've requested memory using "malloc" I find this disturbing because to be effective at dynamic memory management which is a foundational concept in C you have to understand how important it is to be responsible about requesting memory from the OS and then "free"ing it once you are done with it. Again, the material on this subject is very thin.

But, aside from that...if you are a C programmer it's almost a given that you own this book.

Trivia: Ever wondered where the "Hello World" statement came from? This book is it! ;)

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Timeless. Simply Essential. Simply the Best.

The "K & R", as it is widely known has a reputation of both being the pure encapsulation of and a terse discourse in the C Language. Both characterizations have equal merit. That being said, this shockingly succinct (at only 272 pages) publication is both tutorial and reference. In short, more of the "madness behind the method" is covered in this tome than the unwieldy but for some reason mandated college texts from the likes of Deitel or from the more cursory "Dummies" efforts. From the onset, the authors waste no time jumping into each concept with solid code examples. At first these may seem a little complex and in actuality they are--many of the standard library functions are stepped through to drive across such concepts. The authors preface with "C is not a big language", and that is true, however when one considers how the "B-52" of programming languages has been the linguistic basis for the more popular Java, C# and C++ (not to mention what for Ruby, Perl and Python are implemented in) the essence of this work by the authors of the language cannot be overstated. This is written with the student of the programming art in mind, whether at the collegiate or professional level. This should be a required introduction for Comp Sci or Engineering majors to that art, and every serious programming student or practitioner should own it. Given that it still holds its original value, chances are most do. Don't let the price fool you--The C Programming Language is worth its weight in gold!

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The definitive C reference bok

This is THE definitive C language reference.

I wouldn't want to try to learn to program in C from it unless I were already an experience programmer, and it isn't that useful for Windows programming, but this is the book that every experienced Unix C programmer has open on their desk.

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The Book on C

This is the book to have on the C language. A great reference and a great read. This book has been very influential in the field of technical books, often imitated. I recommend it to beginners to advanced programmers.

Great Book

Most people that are serious about C know about this book, often calling it "K & R" or "The Old Testament." As the authors of this book are also the authors of the C language itself, it's kinda hard to find a "better" book on the subject. The first edition has some errors that were (hopefully) fixed in the 2nd edition.
If you are new to programming, or have only used Windows, you may be a little lost as this holds true to the UNIX methodology of doing one thing well, and that is to teach C. It doesn't bother with helping to teach editor tools and compilers, or even basic programming concepts, as those are out of scope and the intended audience already knows about those.

This is a great book, and I wish more books on programming languages had the same approach to teaching syntax and its use.

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Just about every C programmer I respect learned C from this book. Unlike many of the 1,000 page doorstops stuffed with CD-ROMs that have become popular, this volume is concise and powerful (if somewhat dangerous) -- like C itself. And it was written by Kernighan himself. Need we say more?