Thread: K&R Learning Issue

ANSI is irrelevant. If it does not adhere to ISO C, it's no good.
Like I said: C is now an ISO standard, not some american company's pet project.
Now, that doesn't mean it's bad if the code contained within is compatible with the ISO standard, but don't tout the ANSI standard. It's dead and rightly so.

Originally Posted by Tool

Ofcourse - what i'm saying is that pieces will be missing, MANY pieces, but you will have absolutely no problem in learning and easily comprehending those pieces.

No, I still think that is too much to state.
Java/C++ is TOTALLY different from C programming. Concepts you knew in C will most likely all be thrown out the window. It's a completely different environment.
So it isn't easy. It is possible and it is much easier than if you have no experience, certainly.

This is bad since that example neither conforms to C90 nor C99.

Originally Posted by rags_to_riches

I have the Second Edition, and on page 6, we have this.

I cannot find a main definition in there that is explicitly typed as main, although later there are returns from the main function.

Oh my god.

This is probably the only example in the book without the return statement, and i agree with authors taking it out - it's done because they didn't want to confuse beginners with irrelevant details.

You're just plain dumb if you judge the book over one example at the beginning of the book. Cause every serious example i tried on my machine from K&R worked perfectly.

@Elysia
It is ISO.

Originally Posted by Tool

Oh my god.

This is probably the only example in the book without the return statement, and i agree with authors taking it out - it's done because they didn't want to confuse beginners with irrelevant details.

What is done because they don't want to confuse?

@Elysia
It is ISO.

What is ISO?

I was simply pointing out that there ARE examples in K&R where they do not return 0 from main. Reading further, I note they start returning a value from main after the introductions to functions in section 1.7, in which it is stated:

In the interests of simplicity, we have omitted return statements from our main functions up to this point, but we will include them hereafter, as a reminder that programs should return status to their environment.

So Tool, you are correct. It is part of the introduction process for beginners.

Oh, and in the process of reading further, I also see that shortly after the above quote they show the old function implementation mentioned above, only as a bit of history.

All of that is on page 26 of the Second Edition of K&R.

No. Never advocated anything about K&R2, only the first edition.

Originally Posted by kermit

Wow. There is nothing in K&R2 that assumes Linux. As for the implicit main, and the return statement, someone else has pointed out that they did not introduce those concepts immediately. Do you really advocate books should be burned?

No. Never advocated anything about K&R2, only the first edition.

Now it is starting to make sense. Elysia, you have not even read K&R2, and you are totally dumping on it. Would you rather the OP learn some "safe" non-standard Microsoft extensions to the language?

Yes, because the C committee is so stubborn that they refuse to add functions that would lessen the danger of buffer overruns.

Seriously. If you were not so bigoted toward the language which is the father of your beloved C++, you might be able to learn something.

Perhaps I wouldn't be if it wasn't so seriously lacking in everything.
Take a look at C1X. Then compare to C++0x. What do you see? I see a paltry list of features coming. The only good thing is gets_s and multi-threading.
Seriously. What the hell are they thinking? Languages are constantly evolving, yet they add nothing to C. It's already so lacking in features and library functions.

Or C++, which is the modern C.