C: The Complete Reference (Complete Reference Series) [Paperback]

Herbert Schildt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0078821010 | ISBN-13: 978-0078821011 | Publication Date: March 1995 | Edition: 3rd

Whether you are a beginning C programmer or a seasoned pro, the answers to all your C questions can be found in this one-stop resource.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Overall, this is still one of my favorite C books. -- Scott McMahan, UNIXReview.com, July 10, 2000 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

The Ultimate Resource on C—Thoroughly Updated for the New C Standard.

A new ANSI/ISO standard for C, called C99, has been recently adopted and Herb Schildt, the world's leading programming author, has updated and expanded his best-selling reference on C to cover it. Whether you are a beginning C programmer or a seasoned pro, the answers to all your C questions can be found in this one-stop resource. In this authoritative guide, Schildt details the C language, its libraries, and applications, providing insider tips, hundreds of examples, and expertly crafted explanations. As a special bonus, the book concludes by developing a C interpreter, which you can use as-is or expand on your own! And just as you'd expect, everything is presented in the clear, concise, uncompromising style that has made Herb the choice of millions.

Inside you'll find:

• Comprehensive coverage of the C language, including both C89 (the original version of C) and the new features added by C99
• Detailed explanations of each keyword, data type, and operator
• In-depth discussions of pointers, disk I/O, and dynamic allocation
• Complete descriptions of the entire C function library
• Descriptions of the new features added by C99, such as restricted pointers, Boolean and complex data types, the inline keyword, variable-length arrays, and the long data types
• Real-world algorithms and applications, such as stacks, queues, trees, sparse arrays, and sorting. You'll even learn about Al-based searching techniques
• Tips on working efficiently in the C programming environment
• Advice on porting and debugging
• Complete source code for a C interpreter that you can use as-is enhance to fit your needs

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 912 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media; 3rd edition (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0078821010
• ISBN-13: 978-0078821011
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,555,058 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Tutorial, NOT a Reference, March 29, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: C: The Complete Reference (Complete Reference Series) (Paperback)

Having come across Schild's book when starting out as a programmer I
believed it to be one of the best I've read. In this respect it is
very good for a beginner, but searching now for a reference manual
(I've misplaced the misnomer: "C, A Complete Reference") as a
more experienced programmer I realise this is really a
tutorial.

Comparing it against other C reference books I now see the
deficiencies. Schild's book tries to be all things to all men:

oOo
Tutorial: A very chatty manner as it leads you through the workings of
each area, I like the description of "make", albeit brief.

oOo
Reference manual: It covers most of the C language, but there is
incomplete coverage of the C language (eg errno, and bzero).

oOo
Algorithm book: It describes the use of Artificial Intelligence, but
this is such a huge area it only wets the appetite. A reader
attracted by these areas would better off buying a book which
concentrates on these areas specifically and in greater depth.

I was
disappointed to discover the third edition of this book had the C++
overview removed. The new section, "a C interpreter", which I
suspect is to pad out the book after removing the useful chapters from
previous editions is practically useless. It would have been better
to write something similar to Steel's coverage of writing 'clean C'
where a C program runs in a C++ environment to distinguish the
conflict areas between C and C++.

Another failing of Schild's book
is the all too brief coverage of some areas summarised with the cop
out "consult your manufacturer's manual for details".

In the
format of a good reference book, Schild lays down many parts of the C
language under function headings such as "signal". However,
towards the end of each description is a section entitled "see
related functions" with an incomplete list of references; for
example under "signal" it is "raise", but missing
"ssignal, psignal, gsignal". Instead of spreading descriptions
around like this it would be easier to read if related functions were
grouped under a similar heading, so the reader isn't distracted
searching for them.

Schild's book has moved from discussing C in a
DOS environment in his first edition to a Windows environment in the
third edition. Although Schild does cover UNIX, the platform where C
originated, he has skimmed the surface like a pebble across a
pond.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It's worse than I remember., April 5, 2010

By 

Peter Seebach - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: C: The Complete Reference, 4th Ed. (Paperback)

I once wrote a fairly negative web page about the 3rd edition of this book. The 4th edition corrects some of the errors, but many more remain. Schildt's writing is very friendly, but he frankly does not know C well enough to be writing about it. His example code is full of errors. Some might prevent things from working immediately; others would be more subtle, and might not show up until you tried to run stuff in production.

All the people dismissing this as nitpicking have missed the point. *THE C LANGUAGE IS VERY PICKY*. If you want a friendly language that doesn't care whether you know what you're doing, don't program in C. C doesn't just let you shoot yourself in the foot, it helpfully picks the gun back up, reloads it, and hands it back to you, already pointed at your other foot.

Newbies who learn from Schildt's books either stay clueless or spend years overcoming the various misunderstandings they acquired from them.

Seriously, stay away. It's a huge book, it's full of text, but the text is full of errors, and if you try to learn C from this book, you'll end up disadvantaged. There are many better books, and few I'd call worse. (Some are less well-written, but that at least means that you don't pick up their mistakes.)

I opened this book to a random page (page 259), and found a program which had at least six errors in it, some fairly serious. The net result is that the program does not illustrate anything, may not work on some systems, and that it is completely obvious that the author never, ever, ran the program to see what it did. (You can tell, because if he had, he would have noticed that it never displays the output prompt he prints.)

56 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Inaccurate, October 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: C: The Complete Reference, 4th Ed. (Paperback)

Schildt makes numerous errors.
One example:
printf("%f", sizeof f);

Clearly wrong: sizeof f has does not have type double.
Another example:

/* Write 6 integers to a disk file. */
void put_rec(int rec[6], FILE *fp)
{
int len;
len = fwrite(rec, sizeof rec, 1, fp);
if (len != 1) printf("write error");
}

Wrong again; rec is converted to a pointer to int, rather than an array of 6 ints, because it is in the parameter of a function (try it if you don't believe me).

Another example:
You may also declare main() as void if it does not return a value.

Not at all. main returns int and only int.

One last example:
x = *p * (*p++);

This was his attempt to give a code snippet where the order of evaluation is specified. It's blatantly wrong: *p or may or may not be evaluated before p++.

There are many many other errors. This book is only useful as a reference if you are competent enough with C to not need it, in which case, why buy it?