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The C programming Language (2nd Edition)

This book review is about: The C programming Language
By Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.

Published by Prentice-Hall (March 22, 1988)

ISBN 0-13-110362-8 (paperback)
ISBN 0-13-110370-9

This book (widely known as K&R, for Kernighan and Ritchie) has an excellent presentation. The book is not an introduction to programming, but is about the C programming language. If you are already relatively familiar with the concepts of programming, then you will be able to learn C quickly.

It is rather Unix focused, with a whole chapter devoted to it, "The UNIX System Interface"; the reason of course being that Dennis Ritchie (at AT&T Bell Labs) developed the programming language for use on the UNIX operating system on a PDP-11. The initial development of C occurred between 1969 and 1973. By 1973, the C language had become powerful enough that most of the UNIX kernel, originally written in PDP-11/20 assembly language, was rewritten in C.

I have not only learned the C language by reading this book, I have also learned some good programming style, and learned more on how computers work. The book is a small one with its 274 pages. On the back of the book the authors say:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kernighan & Ritchie

We have tried to retain the brevity of the first edition. C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book.

Which is part of the reason I liked it so much. All in all, a very concise and informative book.

great book, highly recommend it. some credit it with the introduction of the "hello world" example, though that may or may not be true.

I also recommend this book, it's great and also taught me a lot of points that I could use in other languages as well. A perfect five star rating from me!

hooray i have it too!

Quote:

Originally Posted by bl00dninja (Post 93607)

great book, highly recommend it. some credit it with the introduction of the "hello world" example, though that may or may not be true.

I've also heard rumors that it was the first such book to begin with Chapter 0.

Excellent book, not for total beginners, but if you know the basics, you will quickly learn good programming style and useful tips. Most of the time when i am writing a C program, and have a question, i turn to either this book or "Expert C Programming", by peter van der linden. Both really good books. Get both. 5 stars. One thing i really liked about this one in particular, was that it shows examples of functions that are central to C coding, like fopen(). This allows you to glean some insight into how all those variable declarations, syscalls, and conditional branching structures fit together.

For those, who have solved the questions, you could look for answers (or alternative way of solving them), in a book called (with same color on the cover page, back and front) "The C ANSWER BOOK". (I'm not able to recall the authors at this time)

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