Thread: Qs: Good Book on Beginning C programming?

Hey Guys,
I am new to this board and am having some difficulty with my lab..so was just wondering..which is a good book for a beginner C programmer that is easy to understand and covers aspects in detail?
Thanks.

C: How To Program by deitel and deitel is a very good one. IT covers topics in detail and provide very educational exercises ( although i found some of them pretty difficult )...

IF you want an online one go search for Sams Teach yourself C++ in 21 days, there is another one but it's for C, it seems that you can't get that one off the net.

Although it doesn't cover everything, I found "C by Example" very easy to understand. I also like "C in 21 Days" and "The C Primer Plus" which are both very detailed. "C How to Program" by Deitel and Deitel is written by two excellent programmers from MIT, but they are perfectionists who can't seem to communicate with beginning programmers.

No, I think the books that u recommended are not much for beginners. Beginners need a bit of theory, bit of code, more theory, more theory explained by code. You won't go far if you hav no experience in programming and someone give you his excellent program's source code.

Nutshell, I liked Deitel and Deitel for how they teach programming principles, but found that their explanations were often poor or missing. I then had to use another book to understand something before I could back to Deitel and Deitel. Is English your second language?

English is my second language. But is it related? We are learning a programming language here. But to some extent, i agree with your opinion on the deitel book.

The C Primer Plus - by Stephen Prata is a good book that I use quite extensively.

Incidently there is a popular IT training group that produce their own text books on C. They are only for paying students but they appear to use many examples and some direct quotes (for quote read "plagiarism") from this book.

C by example is pretty good.

Pointers on C - by K Reeks has some of the best discussions on memory allocation and pointers around. But it probably isn't for a beginner.

The complete reference C - by Herbet Schildt has its moments too..

Pointers on C? BUt is it really worth buying ? It only covers pointers...

Pointers on C? BUt is it really worth buying ? It only covers pointers...

No, not really - It talks alot about pointers, and in more detail than most standard text books. But it also talks preprocessor stuff, File I/O, Dynamic Memory Allocation, ADT's, Runtime environment. It definitely has some stuff that I have not seen in other books, but if you have an extensive collection, you may want to flick through it first.

If anyone is having issues with linked lists - it's a good'n too.

Sams Teach Yourself C in 24 hours is a great book.I got it with my Borland C++ Starter kit.It covers lots of stuff like basic I/O to file I/O it also has alot of example code

The ANSI C Programming Language Second Edition.

By: Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie

ISBN 0-13-110362-8

Just because it can't be said enough:

The C Programming Language, 2nd Ed.
by Brian Kerninghan and Dennis Ritchie.

That there is pretty much the standard book in C, and it is written in tutorial fashion. But if you want a little variety in your life, back in the day when I was first learning C in my very first CIS course, the prof had us use:

C By Dissection
by Al Kelley and Ira Pohl.

And then there's always the traditional O'reilly favorite:

Practical C Programming
I don't know the author, but it has a cow (or cow-like animal anyway) on the cover.

good luck,

starX
www.axisoftime.com

I've learned learned C from:

>The C Programming Language, 2nd Ed.

And programming from:

Datastructures and program design in C
Algorithms in C

For 3 years I struggled to learn C and a few other programming languages and would always get to the 2nd or 3rd chapter and put the book down because the author always seemed to be talking in some weird language I couldnt figure out..until not to long ago I was in a tech book store and saw C Programming for Dummies Volume One, I figured if this book couldnt help me then I give up for good, well I am half way thru volume 2 and just finished my first small program =)

I think for anyone that is trying to learn on their own, these books are the best and explain everything in plain and simple english.

James