Approaching C

Hey..
I started learning C with K&R's 2nd ed. and I found the logic to be somewhat confusing. With this in mind, I picked up one of those (dreaded) learn x in 21 days books.. Needless to say the examples are bad, the typo's are worse, and the code answers for problems are flawed.

I've come to the conclusion that maybe it's how I'm approaching C. I do examples and I answer the questions, but the logic still bugs me.

Generally I'm asking for advice on how to approach the language.

Any pointers welcomed. thanks :/

any pointer, stay away from pointer for now. (sorry, couldn't avoid the pun.) What I do is read most of the book, then look at the previous examples, usually I understand them better when they explain more of the topic. That is my tip.

Stick with K&R2 - if it gets to be too much, leave it for a bit, but refer back to it often. Sometimes if you let something percolate for a while it soaks in and you *get it* later. A nice set of notes to go along with that book is found here. Quite often I have found that something in the book would stump me and the answer would be in Summit's notes.

~/

>Generally I'm asking for advice on how to approach the language.
Carefully. If C is your first language then you will likely have trouble with it, but keep digging and everything will become clear. C isn't a good first language, but it is very rewarding. I highly recommend referring to K&R regularly as well as frequenting these forums. If you have questions, great. We can answer them. If you don't have questions, great. You can lurk and learn from other people's questions. Eventually though you'll want to try your hand at answering questions. You'll find that your own understanding improves drastically when somebody corrects you, and if you aren't corrected often then you're an asset. :)

ty for the replies (and the pun :P).
The note resource looks very useful. ty for the link.

Quote:

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If you have questions, great. We can answer them

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Thanks for that as well, after reading the FAQ and the two stickies, I wasn't too sure whether there were trolls around. Now I know it's looking hopeful.

A quick query concerning the irc channel, is it active?

thanks again for the responses, V. helpful. :)

>I wasn't too sure whether there were trolls around.
We have our share of trolls, but they usually don't stay long once we've made them nice and toasty. :D

>A quick query concerning the irc channel, is it active?
Not much anymore.

Disappointing news about the channel, I'll wonder in there later have a look.

Them there trolls starting to sound pretty tasty, think i'll go eat :p

Thanks for the help anyways

I'm currently at the end of chapter one (k&r 2ed.), with exercise 1-23 making me a little worried.
I've gone through the book three times now, and each time I see this exercise, I get the impression I've missed something.

I'm already aware that I should use fopen or something similiar for this, but I see no reference to it, or any information regarding where to look. (I already know where, but still..)

It's a pretty big step with no information.

Any guidance appreciated.

http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton/kandr2/krx123.html

So I haven't missed anything...
Though now I'm wondering just _how_ that program is meant to function.

The task is to write a program to remove all comments from a c file. It's both impratical and just lacks any point to copying the contents of a file to console or whatever you use.

Great so the program works in a minimalistic fashion...

Am I lacking something, or does this seem completly pointless

Code:

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/* test.c */
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
  /*
    * I built Ben Pfaff's version, but I had to change this section:
    *    if (c == EOF) {
    *        if (state == SLASH)
    *            putchar('/');
    *        break;
    *    }
    */
    puts("Hello world" /* comments */);
    return 0;
}

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Using pipes, the above code is fed to the comment stripper and this is the output.

Code:

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H:\test>cstrip < test.c

#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
       
    puts("Hello world" );
    return 0;
}

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If I wanted to pipe the output to a file, I could do that just as well.

So I just wasn't thinking. I was under the impression that it required command-line arguments.

Thanks for ummm helping me look a fool, greatly appreciated(not joking)