Introductory C: Pointers, Functions, and Files

This book focuses on what a programmer needs to know in order to get a program running in C. It emphasizes how each new programming feature in C relates to the use of pointers to provide a thorough understanding of the numerous applications throughout C.

Petersen's book is both a good C manual for beginners and pleasant reading for those who are fond of C programmming. The language notions are introduced gradually, and a large number of valuable examples, figures, and tables help readers learn. Every chapter begins with short definintions, contains a richly illustrated text and ends with a summary and a set of exercies. The exercises are useful for gaining a better undestanding of the material. The sample programs throughout the book are presented in boxes and are fully explained. The book could be used as a classroom text. -- Computing Reviews, April 1997

This book offers a comprehensible introduction to ANSI-C, which is suitable for readers with little or no knowledge of programming and programming languages. Nevertheless it does contain a lot of advanced features of C. The table of contents includes: binary representation of data types, type conversions, memory organization, precompiler commands, string functions, functions with variable number of parameters, recursion, data structures (linked lists, trees), data protection, system calls and bit operations. Every new feature is explained with simple and increasingly complex examples, and each chapter ends with a summary. Special care is taken to explain in length every detail which has to do with pointers and arrays, a theme, which is expecially difficult to comprehend, not only for a beginner. The presentation is UNIX-oriented, including MAKE and makefile's, but MS-DOS files are treated also. Differences between ANSI and PRE-ANSI-C are made explicit and clarified in corresponding examples. The text contains some dozens of exercises, all with solutions. The book can be recommended for self study and, because of the appendices, for quick refernce also. -- Zentralblat fur Mathematik