Best book on C99 | C: A Reference Manual (5th Edition) | Samuel P. Harbison, Guy L. Steele ...

An amazing reference manual | C: A Reference Manual (5th Edition) | Samuel P. Harbison, Guy L. Steele

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	• C: A Reference Manual (5th Edition) Samuel P. Harbison, Guy L. Steele Prentice Hall, 2002 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 47 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nice Book

This book contains nice layout of information on C Programming. A nice reference to have.

Best book on C99

Whilst I feel that K&R is a classic for C(89/90), it doesn't cover C99 at all. This is where Harbison takes over. It isn't quite in the same concise style. But it does serve well as both a clear description of the language and a reference. It's much easier to read than the ISO C 99 standard (which is also on my desk).

An amazing reference manual

To be honest, I haven't done a lot of C programming. But when I need to, this is the place to go. It has reference material for just about anything you can imagine about the C language. And the cross referencing throughout the book is great. For me it replaces K&R without a doubt.

The thing that I value the most about it, is that it is a true reference. It's not meant to be a "teach you C" book, it's a book that assumes you know what you're doing, and you just need to look up information about the language. And I must say, everything is *thoroughly* covered. Then going beyond the C language in terms of syntactical grammar, it includes reference for the standard C library.

So, even if you've been programming C for years, you would probably enjoy this book, and possible learn something you didn't know, just from it's completeness. Or, for new developers to C, I would use this as a supplement to another "teach you C" style book. When going through a "teach you C" style book, look up the concepts that may be confusing, or incomplete in this book, and I'd bet you'll learn twice as much just from having this next to you.

Enjoy!

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Excellent but needs updating

If you don't already have this reference and are a professional C programmer, you better get it NOW!!!

I've used this since the 2nd edition getting each new edition as soon as released, one copy for the office and one for home. I prefer it over K&R by leaps and bounds. It's much easier to read and find information than K&R. The examples are better and are much more explanatory.

The only problems are that it needs updating, reformatting and modernization (styling to MISRA and/or CERT-C standard would be nice).
It also doesn't cover all the features of the language, as an example "volatile" is missing so you'll still need K&R. If the above were resolved, I'd dump K&R altogether and give it 5 stars.

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About those index omissions...

The "most helpful critical review" reviewer claims the index is incomplete. An example refers to the word "const", which the reviewer claims has its own section (4.4.4) yet is not found in the index. That's funny. I own the 4th edition, and I found "const" in the index refering to, you guessed it, section 4.4.4. It's on page 81 in the 4th edition. It was even easy to find. I looked under "C". I strongly suspect it's in the 5th edition also. I'd say this "most helpful critical review" is highly suspect. BTW, I think this is an extremely helpful book, and am considering buying the 5th edition just for those 20+ extra pages. The 4th provided the sound and solid information I needed to succeed as a C programmer, and it may have even saved my career more than once.

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This authoritative reference manual provides a complete description of the C language, the run-time libraries, and a style of C programming that emphasizes correctness, portability, and maintainability. The authors describe the C language more clearly and in more detail than in any other book.