C is 38 years old. K&R V2 is 22 years old. What's the best modern C book?

by brianwillis • 16 years ago

17 28 16 years ago

jmcguckin• 16 years ago

K&R is a incredible book that every programmer should own. I honestly don't see why you would need any other book for C.

gte910h4• 16 years ago

It's style isn't correct for modern C is a good reason why.

spacemanaki• 16 years ago

Do you have any recommendations?

tedunangst2• 16 years ago

In general, categorizing someone's style preference as incorrect rarely leads to anything good.

And in this instance, considering how many people still use and prefer the style in question, if you're learning C there's a good chance you'll be working with others on existing code using that particular style.

Locke16892• 16 years ago

No. You should read K&R and then read the spec.

jonhendry• 16 years ago

It appears to be out of print.

EDIT: Or maybe not. It's just surprisingly expensive (~$60) and Amazon apparently doesn't stock it themselves.

xiongchiamiov• 16 years ago

It's expensive because people keep buying (and keeping) it.

mncaudill• 16 years ago

One I really liked is _C Programming: A Modern Approach_ by K.N. King.

noarchy• 16 years ago

I personally learned C from that very book, and still own a well-worn copy of it.

tptacek• 16 years ago

I've been recommending CII for years:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1245464

Past that, the trouble with C books is twofold: (a) do you really need that much book for such a small language? and (b) most of what you'd use C for (systems programming, codec design, bare-metal network programming, etc) is covered in domain-specific books that use... wait for it... C as their example language.

jrockway• 16 years ago

The problem with books that use C as their example language is that they don't cover the finer points of C that are going to fuck you in real life. What happens when you strncpy a string that's the same length as n? How should fatal errors be handled? Who is responsible for memory allocation and deallocation?

These are questions you need to know the answer to, but are unrelated to whatever the book is about.

The best way to learn C is to learn some other programming language, and then apply the common sense you learned back to C.

Locke16892• 16 years ago

No, you won't ever really learn that stuff until you just do it. Reading code is part of writing code so you should read some actual C code in your domain before ever writing code.

alnayyir3• 16 years ago

Working on it...

brianwillis2• 16 years ago

Really? You're writing a C book?

alnayyir3• 16 years ago

Yessir

http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1873413

Jach• 16 years ago

I always like Larry Ullman's books, especially his PHP and MySQL one. When I was learning C, his book was really helpful: http://www.larryullman.com/books/c-programming-visual-quicks...

C as a language is pretty simple to learn. Using C in practice is where things can be tricky when you need to dance with the compiler and work on low level systems where a datasheet is always open, and if you haven't had your "Pointer Enlightenment" you're toast. Domain-specific books are key there and just continual practice.

variety• 16 years ago

K&R. It's like the C language itself: it just can't be improved upon. It was already meant for our time, when it was written.

paradoja• 16 years ago

Well, it doesn't cover the niceties of C99. While I own it, and it'd be the first C book i'd recommend, it could perfectly have a chapter explaining some changes in C since it was written.

azharcs• 16 years ago

I recommend Programming in C by Stephen Kochan http://amzn.to/cXnEPp

I have also heard good things about Illustrating C

EatenByGrues• 16 years ago

I may be using the word 'modern' a bit liberally here, but these are all more recent than K&R at least. 'C A Reference Manual' I think is what a lot of people really want out of a C book and 'Expert C'/'C Traps and Pitfalls' both help with all of the less intuitive parts of the language that you don't really get out of K&R.

C A Reference Manual http://www.amazon.com/Reference-Manual-Samuel-P-Harbison/dp/...

Expert C http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van-Linden/dp...

C Interfaces and Implementations http://www.amazon.com/Interfaces-Implementations-Techniques-...

C Traps and Pitfalls http://www.amazon.com/C-Traps-Pitfalls-Andrew-Koenig/dp/0201...

codefisher• 16 years ago

The book I have is "C A reference Manual" by Harbison and Steele. The advice I got when I had to buy one or other for a course I was doing that it covered much the same stuff, just assumed you had some background in programming.

drallison• 16 years ago

K & R, V2. Mandatory reading for anyone who programs, IMHO. Still modern at 22.

C is 38 years old. K&R V2 is 22 years old. What's the best modern C book?

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