C in a Nutshell: The Definitive Reference

Ditto to all the 5-star reviews of this exceptional C reference! This work is clearly a labor of love from authors Peter Prinz and Tony Crawford, who have left no stone unturned in their expansive coverage of the C language. A substantial effort went into the production of this high caliber book. While there are a handful of prominent titles on C, precious few of them have been updated for the present day. This newly revised 2nd edition is a refreshing exception which includes in-depth details of the latest C11 standard, and clearly distinguishes older C89/90 features from the newer C99/C11 revisions. The book is efficiently organized into three parts: (1) overview of the C language itself, (2) thorough reference on C's standard library, and (3) description of GNU programming tools and IDEs compatible with most modern platforms.Geared toward the experienced software developer needing a comprehensive desk reference, this work strikes the right balance between describing practical language features in sufficient detail without drowning the programmer in an ocean of dry, formalized text from the official ISO specification on C (a requisite for compiler writers and system implementors). Although abundant, easily digestible code examples and techniques are provided throughout the book, it is NOT a tutorial or primer on C; newcomers to the language (and procedural programming in general) are better served by works such as "C Primer Plus" (Stephen Prata) or "Programming in C" (Stephen Kochan).The publishing quality of this title is notable and consistent with O'Reilly's high standards. This is desirable for a reference work that is likely to be handled frequently. Typesetting is clean and gentle on the eyes, with generous margins that make the text standout clearly without straining. At just over 800 pages (including a comprehensive index), the book's content is substantial, yet reasonably easy to pick up and hold for extended periods. The spine flexes smoothly and the compact dimensions (6"w x 9"h x 1.5"d) allow the front, middle, and back of the book to be flipped through with ease. Pages are edge-indexed in black to conveniently locate commonly accessed sections such as function descriptions and core language topics.All in all, a highly recommended, must-have reference worthy in every professional C programmer's collection!

Final Update: I would give the Kindle version 0 stars if I could, but the content of this book is 5 stars.The multitude of functions and their variations in the standard library is very well documented. The coverage on C11 has not let me down so far and I am very glad to have the PAPERBACK sitting on my desk! There is an extensive standard library reference that covers C89 thru C11 and each entry has a label for which version of the language it appears in. There is also clear (but terse) discussion of all of modern features (C11) including atomics, threading, generic macros and other constructs that move C into the 21st Century.In reality, If you need more detail than this you will need to see the docs for your compiler and/or a copy of the C standard you need.And Note: All of the C11 features are available in the free software gcc compiler right now. [...]Also Note: You can review the example sources on github. [...]Old Review:Update on Content: The content in this book is quite good overall and has helped me sort out the details of C11 and C99.I bought a physical version of the book and got the full quality I expect from an O'Reilly title.I have updated this review after having tried to use this book on read.amazon.com and a 2nd gen Kindle Fire.This is not about the content really, it is about the continuing problem of technical books and reference works being nearly unusable in the Kindle format. I decided to give Kindle a shot again this year with a brand new title I needed. I wish I had purchased the physical book.This is a reference book ->The search function is disabled on read.amazon.com. Really? It works on a Kindle Fire but it is simply a naive search (all terms ANDed)The table of contents has a very course granularity. So guess and explore, in other words you click on something and then click dozens of times to get to a subsection. This is true on read.amazon.com and the Kindle Fire.When you get to a section, things like header names are not links. So you read an explanation but there is no way to click through to the details, you have to go to the ToC and explore some more. Some section names do not appear to scale when you change the font size, this means that if you enlarge the text (because you are vision impaired) you will miss the section headings...In the body of the text there are numerous mentions of types, functions etc but they don't link to the details. This leaves you with the option of using the drag bar to guess and then exploring one click per 1/2 page on the Kindle FIre. This is a 766 page book.The only way to get to the Index is to go the ToC, click and click on Index in the Kindle FIre, on read.amazon.com you have to click thru 13 times to get to the Index (no menu).When you get to the index there are no alphabet links (and you guessed it:) If you are looking for va_args -> you have a lot of clicking to go...This makes the Kindle version utterly worthless.

This is one of the best software books I have ever read. And believe me, I have read plenty of them! (Notice how I have phrased that. Even if a book is made primarily for reference, such as this one, I prefer to make at least one complete reading of it cover to cover, but usually several.) The presentation is orderly, clear, grammatical, and even graphically satisfying. Thank you authors, especially, for formatting the code samples sensibly, instead of caving to dubious popular preferences. I am hard pressed to find negatives in this book, but one does jump out at me: I would have liked to see some detailed coverage of how to use regular expressions in C. The great thing about this book is that it is reference, not a textbook. It does not talk up to you or down to you. This is not a book for beginners, of course -- there are too many of those out there already. Well, if you are serious at all about C programming, then you will want to have this book in close reach at all times.

This is a great and comprehensive reference with many examples and great explanations. I highly recommend it for anyone that needs some help with C programming. There’s many ways in C to do one task, and this will help you create more compact and efficient code. Get ready though, it’s a lot of reading and many pages, but that is what makes it a great reference. It covers it all.

A very complete view of C. I love this book, it gives you detailed answers to ever why question you have. It quickly gave me an understanding of the structure of the syntax that makes you think "it just makes sense". Very high level of detail.

This is a deep and comprehensive book on the C language, but I must stress that if you are new to coding, this book will most likely frustrate and confuse you, as within the first few pages, it mentions advanced computer science elements such as tokens, hexadecimals, bytes, ASCII--something you would know about only with a strong computer science foundation.

300 pages out of 800, (the standard library) are NOT index in any menu, impossible to navigate on the concept, we have to scroll over and over the 300 pages to find a function of interest to study (suppose a student does not know what the names are of a function to search with the "search" button)

Es un muy buen libro para tener a mano.Ojo!, si lo que quieres es comenzar a aprender C entonces este no es el libro que buscas. Si ya tienes conocimientos de C, entonces en él encontrarás un libro de consulta inmejorable con todo el estándar explicado.

I've been writing C for 30 years now and I bought this book to bring myself up to date on the new features in C11, particularly those related to threading and atomic variables. So far as I can see this is the only book that actually covers these topics.It didn't disappoint: multi-threading necessities like mutexes, semaphores etc are covered; atomic variables and their associated functions are also well explained. All the explanations contained real examples with actual code showing how you could solve real problems with these features.The book also contains an exhaustive and detailed listing of the C standard library functions, which introduced me to many that I never knew existed. Each entry states the version of C in which it was introduced (C99, C11, etc) which is vital if you are working on an old system or with dated compilers.There then follows an extended section on using the GNU build environment and debugger, which will be of rather limited usefulness to Windows users! In fact the whole book has a distinct Linux feel to it, but if you are writing for other operating systems don't be put off by this - most of the book is totally general and will definitely be relevant to you.In short a good way for an experienced programmer to keep up to date, and an excellent reference work too.I haven't mentioned the early chapters which explain C from scratch. They are perfectly adequate, however if you are a beginner who wants to learn C you will do much better to get the classic Kernigan and Ritchie "C Programming Language" which is still by far the best book on C. I wish I could write as clearly and succinctly as those two!

Wow!!. When you have great knowledge and know the fine ART of telling then such a book results. I wish i have read this book decades back. It is my bad luck not to find this kind of book. He is far ahead in teaching C then even the designers of this language could. Salute to you Sir.