Thread: K&R Learning Issue

I'm not a C programmer and have never read any C programming book, so I really cannot say.
I'd suggest the C books topic.

Well I learned C++ first. I've never read a book on C aside from K&R. The only reason I am familiar with the language is because there is a lot similar between C and C++. When going through others peoples code, figuring out how it works, it came pretty easily. That and there is a lot to be read on the internet. Aside from that, it takes practice and time. Start yourself some projects once you think you're ready.

Originally Posted by Tool

No, no and no!

K&R is the best C book out there - made by creators of the C language.

C is now an ISO standard, not some american company's pet project.

C is now an ISO standard, not some american company's pet project.

Never had problems running any code from K&R in 2010, therefore i'm preety sure it conforms to the standard.

The reason i am suggesting K&R is because i have read the whole book, did all the exercises and i can assure you that, if you go through this book theraly, you will have absolutely NO problem switching to ANY language in a very short period of time, especially C++ because of the similar syntax.

Examples in K&R are amazing - they do not give out just any random examples - they give you examples of code in which you can learn C itself!

One example of this is where they teach you a bit of recursion by making a "parser" which takes input like char (*a)[20]; and then produces output - a: pointer to an array. This way you're learning recursion, general programming methods and C syntax itself - how to read complicated declarations! I did this exercise more then half a year ago - and yet i still remember how to read complicated declarations and rules for them.

Also, in the 8th chapter you'll learn a bit of system programming and see how things work more in-depth. For example, you'll write your own printf() function, scanf() (this is ch7), your own FILE structure and functions related to it. Therefore you will know how I/O system work better then most people who learned C.

Not to mention pointers - the core of C - authors were smart enough so they put out more then 20 exercises for the pointer chapter.

You'll also learn how malloc and free works, therefore giving you a bit of knowledge about how dynamic allocation actually works - it's not that simple as most people think. You'll see that C and it's functions are more complex then you think.

You'll learn alot about parsing, bit operators, how to write some of the trivial functions like itoa(), reverse(), atoi(), how to convert data (for example, string to number or number to string).

At ch4 you'll learn what's stack by writing your own calculator.

You'll learn all the important aspects of the language through examples presented in the book and the exercises, for which you have solutions on the internet (for free!).

AND THIS, is exactly the reason i'd preffer K&R over any other C book - because it has free solutions for the exercises on the internet. From the solutions you will be able to improve your knowledge dramatically, cause usually examples in the book aren't enough for you to learn how to solve exercises in the book.

Originally Posted by Syscal

Maybe this is off-topic:

Elysia, why does your sig ask "Why did the Java creators shoot themselves in the foot"?

Since in my opinion Java is a piece of crap language.
It is built off C++, but they've taken everything good and thrown it out in favor of dumbing it down. How about no operator overloading? References which are clearly a hybrid of pointers and references in C++, yet not as easy as references? Those are two examples of the mistakes they made.
Hence my mockery of why did they shoot themselves in the foot. Why did they destroy everything good about the language they tried to improve?

Originally Posted by Tool

Never had problems running any code from K&R in 2010, therefore i'm preety sure it conforms to the standard.

I haven't read the book, but perhaps you can tell me if there are any code such as

Code:

main ()
{
    /* Bla... */
    /* NOTE: No return statement. */
}

And

Code:

foo(p)
void* p;
{
    /* Bla... */
}

The reason i am suggesting K&R is because i have read the whole book, did all the exercises and i can assure you that, if you go through this book theraly, you will have absolutely NO problem switching to ANY language in a very short period of time, especially C++ because of the similar syntax.

Also, I think that is a little much to state. How you go about C programming is totally different from Java/C++.
Some pieces will still be missing.

Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets is an excellent adjunct to K&R for straight C.

EDIT: Implicit main() is part of K&R, true. The old function implementation posted is not. Up-to-date C standards indeed dictate that the entry point to a C program be either

Code:

int main(void)

or

Code:

int main(int argc, char *argv[])

so that is a failing; however, modern C compilers will warn of this issue.

Also note the missing return types.