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From: gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Teaching myself C, and how?
Message-ID: <82400064@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 4 Jan 90 17:28:50 GMT
References: <1971@<259E48A4>
Lines: 19
Nf-ID: #R:<259E48A4:1971:p.cs.uiuc.edu:82400064:000:906
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Jan  4 00:06:00 1990


I recommend "C: A Reference Manual", by Harbison & Steele
(Prentice-Hall).  This ANSII C book is about as definitive as
Kernighan & Ritchie's book.  The authors, who have written numerous C
compilers and know the ideosyncracies of the language, contributed to
the ANSII X3J11 standardization effort.

The book is a very well-organized reference (better than K & R, in my
opinion).  My experience with K & R (I have the 1st edition) is that
it's a great read, but a painful reference.  Material is scattered
throughout the book, and the index is not great.

Harbison & Steele covers the entire language and libraries in less
than 400 pages.  Some overly tutorial books blow 700 pages and still
omit large portions of the C language.

Don Gillies, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Illinois
1304 W. Springfield, Urbana, Ill 61801      
ARPA: gillies@cs.uiuc.edu   UUCP: {uunet,harvard}!uiucdcs!gillies