Re: Learning C with Older books ?.

From: Dan Pop (Dan.Pop_at_cern.ch)
Date: 11/29/04 

Date: 29 Nov 2004 03:37:15 GMT

In <clcm-20041123-0014@plethora.net> Francis Glassborow <francis@robinton.demon.co.uk> writes:

>In article <clcm-20041123-0005@plethora.net>, mmmm <papa@mland.gr>
>writes
>>HI,
>>You should!!! buy the "C programming language" from Kernighan and Ritchie.
>>It's a must for everyone! An excellent book!
>
>However be aware that it makes many implicit assumptions about the
>programming environment. ^^^^^^^^

Haven't noticed any, so please elaborate.

>Quite a few early implementations of C were
             ^^^^^
>based on this book with the result that necessary tool support (such as
>lint) was unknown to many who learnt C by combining this book with a
>compiler.

K&R1 mentions lint in several places. It is the C standard itself that
completely ignores it, so I fail to see your point.

>If you are already familiar with a Unix type development environment K&R
>is excellent. If you are not, or are not using such an environment I am
>less certain.

I learned C from K&R1 years before getting my first Unix account. It was
(by far) the best programming language tutorial book I have ever read.
And the first implementation I have used was as Unix-unlike as you can
get (HiSoft C for the Sinclair ZX-Spectrum).

>There is a wealth of bad, dangerous C code (full of
>undefined behaviour) written by people who relied on this book as their
>sole source of information on programming (in C).

Where they taught by the book to write such code?

Dan 

-- 
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Dan.Pop@ifh.de
           Currently looking for a job in the European Union
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