The C Programming Language

By Dennis M. Ritchie and Brian W. Kernighan

Book Overview

The definitive reference guide to C programming from K&R for writing good code that works and is easy to modify Learn how to program in C from the developers of C, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0131101633
• ISBN13: 9780131101630
• Release Date: February 1978
• Publisher: Prentice-Hall
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 1.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 7.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

This is the C book for UNIX users.

While maybe not showing extensions of various UNIX flavors, it also does not clutter with .NET and other temporally contrived notions that inhibit portability. Some people refer to this as the "c" bible. Written by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, well known in the C and UNIX field. This book is not cluttered with C++, forcing you to figure out what part is "c". You may think that this book is not for beginners. However, it is more of a combination of the dictionary and "The Elements of Style" for the "c" language. This does, of course, include ANSI C, which is transportable to all platforms. It also states that” since the ANSI C library is in many cases modeled on UNIX facilities, this may help your understanding of the library as well." The language itself, as with any language, has its strong points. The main one is pointers. By not duplicating data and not having to move it all around, the application can be lightning-fast and the code tight and to the point. Other advantages of the language are pointed out as bit shifting. This book should be used as a prerequisite to C communications books. 1978 - First Edition. 1988 - Second Edition (ANSI C). Dennis Ritchie passed away in 2011. After the 2nd edition (1988), the C standard kept evolving: C99 C11 C17 C23 There may be newer after this review is written.

Condensed Cream-Of-C Soup

About 5 years into my programming career, I was mildly interested in learning C, so I picked up this book. At the time, I was deterred - it was very brief, terse, and confusing, so I put it back down again.But now, years later, with many more languages under my belt, I find myself again drawn to C. So I picked up this book again (2nd edition), and finally, I see the light! It is a wonderful book, I agree with all the glowing comments people have written about it, BUT! It is a book written by a computer programmer, for other computer programmers, not a book written by a teacher for a beginning student.C is alive and well, and still in use today - it lives "at the core" of most popular languages. You can see its influence on C++, JavaScript, even Visual Basic. If you are ready for it, reading and working through the examples in this book will provide you with a solid base for understanding an amazing variety of 'newer' programming languages.You have to work through the examples, though. If you 'just read' this book, you'll comprehend and retain close to '\0' (null) of the information presented. It's only by going through the examples, that you really nail the subject matter. Yeah, I know, some of these examples are tough - but they're also real-life, and typical of routines every programmer writes and uses. I myself sweated blood over exercise 3-3, but hours later when I was done, the satisfaction of comparing my answer favorably to others was worth it. :-)I have the C For Dummies books 1 and 2, and after going through them, I was still a Visual Basic programmer. ;-D If you already are a computer programmer, and want to obtain serious knowledge in C without wasting your valuable time, learn from this book.

The C Bible - no Question

This is probably the greatest introductory programming world ever written!This is the classic "how to program" book. The book may seem quite old, but so is C, so you'll not miss anything. Half of the other introductory books written today will often quote this book, especially in reference to the "hello, world." example contained within. The "K & R" is well known among programmers as the all-time classic programming book - for any language.If you read through this book, I promise that you'll find it easy to grasp with a pace that will not bore you to tears.For those of you just starting off, remember that this is not a C++ book. You may not want to use Visual C++ 6.0 with this book. Instead, you can download a DOS based C compiler from wwwdeloriecom. I believe you'll find that compiler much more appropriate for learning C with this book, and best of all, it's FREE. After this book, you should have very little trouble adapting your knowledge to C++ and the Visual C++ 6.0 IDE.

The most elegant programming book I have ever read

This book is not "for Dummies". It assumes that you already have some knowledge of structured programming languages (i.e. Pascal). For example, this book spends four well-written pages explaining everything you need to know about functions. If you don't know what a function is, this will clearly not be enough. However, if you do know about functions, this book will not drone on and on for an entire chapter or two on the subject like some of the foot-crunching tomes the size of an encyclopdia. The book is expensive ($40) for its size (approx. 250pgs.), but it is worth every penny. To quote the authors: "C is not a big language, and it is not served well by a big book." As a bonus, almost anything you need to know about C can be found in seconds using the excellent index. It should be noted that this is a language reference and will NOT tell you how to use your editing environment or compiler. In summary, intermediate or advanced programmers should be able to learn C with reasonable proficiency in a short amount of time.