C In A Nutshell

Learning a language--any language--involves a process wherein you learn to rely less and less on instruction and more increasingly on the aspects of the language you've mastered. Whether you're learning French, Java, or C, at some point you'll set aside the tutorial and attempt to converse on your own. It's not necessary to know every subtle facet of French in order to speak it well, especially if there's a good dictionary available. Likewise, C programmers don't need to memorize every detail of C in order to write good programs. What they need instead is a reliable, comprehensive reference that they can keep nearby. C in a Nutshell is that reference.

This long-awaited book is a complete reference to the C programming language 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 Nutshell covers virtually everything you need to program in C, describing all the elements of the language and illustrating their use with numerous examples.

The book is divided into three distinct parts. The first part is a fast-paced description, reminiscent of the classic Kernighan & Ritchie text on which many C programmers cut their teeth. It focuses specifically on the C language and preprocessor directives, including extensions introduced to the ANSI standard in 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

The second 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 a description of each standard library function. Part III provides the necessary knowledge of the C programmer's basic tools: the compiler, the make utility, and the debugger. The tools described here are those in the GNU software collection.

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

About the Authors
Peter Prinz specializes in developing software and in teaching Assembler, C/C++/C#, Java, Windows (MFC), and UNIX system programming.

As the chief developer and cofounder of an IT company, Peter has gained extensive experience in software development for computer telephony. As a seminar leader and key course developer at a professional consulting and training company he has taught courses to thousands of software developers.

Peter is the co-author with his wife Ulla of several other books on software development in C/C++. More recent projects include "A Complete Guide to Programming in C++" (Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2002).

Peter currently resides in Munich, Germany, with Ulla and their two children: Vivi and Jeany. He may be contacted by email at prinz_peter@t-online.de

Tony Crawford is a freelance translator based just outside Berlin, Germany. In addition to regular software localization projects, he has translated books on network administration and ATM. A US native, he completed undergraduate work at Occidental College, Los Angeles; Université de Perpignan, France; and Technische Universität, Berlin. Tony translates from German into English. E-mail him at tc@crawfords.de.