C in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference

Learning a language--any language--involves aprocess wherein you learn to rely less and less on instruction and moreincreasingly on the aspects of the language you've mastered. Whether you'relearning French, Java, or C, at some point you'll set aside the tutorial andattempt to converse on your own. It's not necessary to know every subtle facetof French in order to speak it well, especially if there's a good dictionaryavailable. Likewise, C programmers don't need to memorize every detail of C inorder to write good programs. What they need instead is a reliable,comprehensive reference that they can keep nearby. C in a Nutshell is thatreference. This long-awaited book is a complete reference to the C programminglanguage and C runtime library. Its purpose is to serve as a convenient,reliable companion in your day-to-day work as a C programmer. C in a Nutshellcovers virtually everything you need to program in C, describing all theelements of the language and illustrating their use with numerous examples. Thebook is divided into three distinct parts. The first part is a fast-paceddescription, reminiscent of the classic Kernighan & Ritchie text on which manyC programmers cut their teeth. It focuses specifically on the C language andpreprocessor directives, including extensions introduced to the ANSI standardin 1999.

These topics and others are covered:

• Numeric constants
• Implicit and explicit type conversions
• Expressions and operators Functions
• Fixed-length and variable-length arrays
• Pointers
• Dynamic memory management
• Input and output

Thesecond part of the book is a comprehensive reference to the C runtime library;it includes an overview of the contents of the standard headers and adescription of each standard library function. Part III provides the necessaryknowledge of the C programmer's basic tools: the compiler, the make utility,and the debugger. The tools described here are those in the GNU softwarecollection.

C in aNutshell is the perfect companion to K&R,and destined to be the most reached-for reference on your desk.

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