On to C

Read this book if you want to add C to your programming-language repertoire. You can use this book to learn the essentials of the language and to prepare for real-world work.
You learn the key concepts as features are added to a short, yet representative C program. The final version of the program reads information from a file describing stock trades and predicts the next-day's price using a straight-line extrapolation, thereby reflecting the popularity of C in applications involving data analysis.
As you see the program evolve, you learn how to: define functions; benefit from function abstraction; solve ordering problems with function prototypes; process data from files; create structures and objects; use pointer parameters to avoid argument copying; use pointer parameters to alter values; create new structure objects at run time; define constructors, readers, and writers; benefit from data abstraction; use enumerations and type synonyms to improve readability; use unions to capture class distinctions; use bits to record state information; prevent memory leaks; access command-line arguments; organize and compile multiple-file programs; and much more.
Special Features: Illustrates each new idea through an improvement to a short, yet complete program. There are no nonsense programs or rapid shifts among unrelated examples; summarizes key points in the form of easily mastered if-then rules; emphasizes the virtues of function abstraction and data abstraction; and helps you to start a personal library of general-purpose, templatelike patterns.

Patrick Henry Winston teaches computer science and directs the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.