Product Details
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Written for experienced C programmers who want to quickly pick up some of the insights and techniques of experts and master the fine arts of ANSI C, this volume passes on the wisdom of a highly experienced C compiler writer and his colleagues to help programmers reach new heights, and avoid common software pitfalls along the way. Using an original approach and a humorous style that makes deep knowledge both easy and accessible, it gathers into one place, tips, hints, shortcuts, guidelines, ideas, idioms, heuristics, tools, anecdotes, C folklore, and techniques that are often penciled in margins and on backs of papers by those working in the programming trenches—working on many different kinds of projects, over many, many years. Each chapter is divided into self-contained sections. Includes extended discussions of major topics such as declarations and arrays/pointers; offers a great many hints and mnemonics; covers topics that many C programmers find confusing; and features one of the best introductions to C++, and the rationale behind it. Throughout, technical details are interspersed with many true stories of how C programming works in practice, and each chapter ends with an amusing C story or piece of software folklore. For software engineers and computer programmers who are writing, developing, testing, debugging software on either IBM PCs or Unix systems.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun to read and extremely helpful,
By Dean Jones Jr. (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Expert C Programming (Paperback)
The title of this message says it all. This is my 2nd time around reading this book. I bought it about 1 year ago and I'm reading it again just for fun really... The author keeps the book humorous throughout and you'll definitely know you're a geek when you find yourself snickering at all of the hilarious comments in the book. These comments aren't "fun filler" like other books use. It's strange how other books will just throw in silly comic headers at the beginning of each chapter or take time away from learning to say something stupid to try and get a laugh. Peter actually has comments that are hilarious, but will help you learn at the same time. Everything is extremely informative. My favorite chapters include:Chapter 3: Unscrambling Declarations in C Yes, even the Appendix was excellent. This book will really help a novice C programmer gain a very FIRM grasp of pointers and C declarations that scared ... us when we first saw C. Find a good book on Algorithms ( Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in C ) and you're definitely an expert in C!
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting but not oustanding.,
By
This review is from: Expert C Programming (Paperback)
At first glance the book purports to be similar to other early Bell Labs books about C, specifically, "The C Programming Language", "The Elements of Programming Style", "The C Standard I/O Library", and (not bell labs but another great book) "C: A Reference Manual", etc. However, the author suffers from being a compiler-writer who doesn't really understand the design philosophy of the C language. This is the same afflication that Bjarne Stroustroup and other language designers suffer from. For example, he complains that only 3% of switch statements in his own compiler have case statement fall-throughs, therefore "We conclude that default fall-through on switches is a design defect in C." (p. 38). This is a rant of a dangerous person. Two underlying concepts of the C language are, "No hidden instructions generated where I cannot see them," and "When in doubt, provide open operators for maximum expressiveness - do not restrict expressiveness". Just because this particular compiler-writer lacks the inventiveness to do interesting things with a switch statement he proposes to force his biases upon the rest of the world. I have seen and written macro libraries that allow you to suspend & resume function calls, and these libraries perform fall-through 100% of the time. Therefore, this book is in error and the author is a victim of his own lack of creativity. Another thing I disliked was a tendency to try to impress the reader with irrelevant facts that are not germane to the subject, such as typos in the ANSI C standard or tired-out stories on how to burn out IBM PC displays. These things are irrelevant and do not belong within the book. I recommend you check out the book from a library (as I did) and please do not waste your money on this book.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Book! Informative and fun,
By
This review is from: Expert C Programming (Paperback)
For those looking to dig deeper into the nuances of the C language, this is an excellent book! It has given me a better understanding of C that is helping me design better C code. A must have!
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