Preface

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:

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 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.