This book is devoted to practical C programming. C is currently the
premier language for software developers. That's because it's widely
distributed and standard. Newer languages are available, such as
C++, but these are still evolving. C is still the language of choice for
robust, portable programming.
This book emphasizes the skills you will need to do real-world
programming. It teaches you not only the mechanics of the C
language, but the entire life cycle of a C program as well (including the
program's conception, design, code, methods, debugging, release,
documentation, maintenance, and revision).
Good style is emphasized. To create a good program you must do
more than just type in code. It is an art in which writing and
programming skills blend themselves together to form a masterpiece.
True art can be created. A well-written program not only functions
correctly, but is simple and easy to understand. Comments allow the
programmer to include descriptive text inside the program. When
clearly written, a commented program is highly prized.
A program should be as simple as possible. A programmer should
avoid clever tricks. This book stresses simple, practical rules. For
example, there are 15 operator precedence rules in C. These can be
simplified into two rules:
1. Multiply and divide come before add and subtract.
2. Put parentheses around everything else.
Consider two programs. One was written by a clever programmer
using all the tricks. The program contains no comments, but it works.
The other program is well commented and nicely structured, but it
doesn't work. Which program is more useful? In the long run, the
broken one. It can be fixed. Although the clever program works now,
sooner or later all programs have to be modified. The worst thing that
you will ever have to do is to modify a cleverly written program.
This handbook is written for people with no previous programming
experience or programmers who already know C and want to improve
their style and reliability. You should have access to a computer and
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know how to use the basic functions such as a text editor and the
filesystem.
Specific instructions are given for producing and running programs
using the UNIX operating system with a generic cc compiler or the
Free Software Foundation's gcc compiler. For MS-DOS/Windows users,
instructions are included for Borland C++, Turbo C++, and Microsoft
Visual C++. (These compilers compile both C and C++ code.) The
book also gives examples of using the programming utility make for
automated program production.
How This Book is Organized
You must crawl before you walk. In Part I we teach you how to crawl.
These chapters enable you to write very simple programs. We start
with the mechanics of programming and programming style. Next,
you learn how to use variables and very simple decision and control
statements. In Chapter 7, we take you on a complete tour of the
software life cycle to show you how real programs are created.
Part II describes all of the other simple statements and operators that
are used in programming. You'll also learn how to organize these
statements into simple functions.
In Part III we take our basic declarations and statements and learn
how they can be used in the construction of advanced types such as
structures, unions, and classes. We'll also introduce the concept of
pointers. Finally, a number of miscellaneous features are described
Part IV.
Chapter
