Customer Reviews

C Unleashed

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First of all, the book gets four stars instead of five because of the horrible, horrible editing. Typographic errors abound, including inside programs, where the formatting is often not what the author intended (like the many instances of spaces *inside* the decrement operator); at least one figure is chopped off, and some tables are incorrectly formatted too. The authors don't share the same coding style, and the editor fails to make the programs look consistent across the book. Generally, I found SAMS books lacking in both content and presentation, but this is an exception, as the content is great. Shame on you, SAMS, for making a mess of the presentation.

That said, it is a very good book; it covers many interesting topics to varying depths, but always deep enough to be useful, and certainly impressively deep considering the breadth and variety of the topics. The strongest point of the book is the advice about how C programs ought to be written, and the special care given to the Standard. As one of my fellow reviewers demonstrates, there are people in need of that advice, although not all of them are prepared to accept it (he gave the book a single star).

An unusual number of authors contributed to this book, which is a Good Thing, as it means that each chapter was written by someone who was very familiar with the topic, rather than by a sigle person who knew what he was talking about, but maybe didn't have lots of actual experience in that particular area. The main author did a good job on keeping the book coherent (I'd usually assign the praise to the editor, but judging by the awful mess they made in other respects, I suspect it was the author's work, not the editor's), yet the chapters make sense on their own. Be sure though to read Part I eventually, it teaches you some good habits, in the likely case you don't already have them all.

Subtle humour (yes, with a 'u' -- Richard Heathfield is British) makes the read entertaining, too; while other technical books are bone-dry or unwisely make forced attempts at being funny, this one seems to strike the right balance.

I note some of the later reviews kind of tanked this book but I am inclined to disagree with the naysayers. I had just been paroled from a 3-to-5 year sentence at a SoCal sweat shop where this book was purchased to avoid attending some in-house classes conducted by the resident, egomaniacal C guru who was attempting to hang onto his tenuous hold over other employees by brow-beating them, otherwise insulting their abilities, motivation, and (when all else failed) their lineage. To suppliment the dubious benefit of these sessions (and obviate the hell-week atmosphere), I purchased this book and used it as a substitute. I found that it taught me everything that the dolt was attempting to do without near as much pain. The book does not strictly build on previous chapters as well as it should, but does present pretty fair illustrations of what a maintenance type will encounter in the older C code bases that they sign on to maintain. Sure, it's not organized as well as it should, but have you ever looked at the notes and examples you have prepared during the course of your employment at a company? I'll wager that the chapters in this book are much more logically constituted.

As to the programming examples, they are just fine. If you are just out of your short pants and want to learn about single- or double-linked lists, or the other gimmicks that turn you from a beginner to a competent intermediate, then the CD is just the trick. Unwrap some of the examples, fire up your IDE and step through them, get to know them; adapt them; use them..

..beats the skippy out of having some crotchety old miscreant screaming at you like an aged drill instructor that you are pond scum and you won't *ever* be good enough to code C like him.

Who the hell cares? I got my "C Unleashed", man.

This is an absolutely exceptional book that provides the reader with a understanding in a vast number of areas of advanced C programming. Each chapter can be read as a single entity and thus ensures that the reader can just pick out a chapter of interest without having to read the preceeding chapters. This book is a must for any intermediate C programmer who is looking to improve their C programming skills quickly to an advanced level.

I've seen a lot of C books and this is my favorite (aside from the original K&R 2nd edition). This book covers an impressively large amount of useful information.

Im not an advaced programmer, but reading some parts... I learned a lot of good things. I couldnt describe them here, but i will implement them on the future projects ahead. Things that I think are essential to the industry grade programmer and to becoming one.
The material was delivered clearly, not necessarily simple... but it is clear. The book is worth all my hard saved money... and im glad to have it, and its fun to read too...

When seeking a reference, most experienced programmers will rather buy a reference that focuses more on the advanced issues than the language concepts itself. Mainly because almost all decent compilers come with extensive help files that cover most of what the programmers might need regarding the language itself. This book doesn't explain much about C, but instead uses C as a tool to explain some very useful issues that are crucial to almost all advanced programmers.

The book wastes no space on trivial stuff like how to open your compiler or use a non-standard C function. Instead, it goes directly into what's important, explaining the concepts and giving concrete examples where appropriate, all using ANSI C.

Since most of the issues aren't dependant on the implementation schemes, almost any advanced programmer would benefit from this book, even if he/she is not programming in C (assuming advanced knowledge of C, of course). The only exceptions are the topics that talk about the ANSI C rules and code organization and optimization. The only disadvantage here is that this book doesn't cover object oriented concepts, but that's not a surprise of course as the book is titled "C Unleashed." But still for anything else other than that, this could be a great help even to C++ programmers.

The book chapters have been written by more than 10 experienced programmers, 6 of them are really good, which makes each chapter standalone as a small tutorial on some issue. The writing style of Richard Heathfield and many of the co-authors is very nice to read and clear to understand. Some parts, of course, do not have that nice writing style, but throughout the book, the technical information is very clear and easy to comprehend.

I wouldn't recommend this book to any new programmers. But for the more advanced ones, this is something they would want to check.

-Mokhtar M. Khorshid

If you've programmed in C, you must read this book. The chapters can be read seperately, which means that you can attack them at a time that suits you. I found the part about Genetic Algorithms particular interesting.I'm doing a course in AI now and this has helped quite a bit.

Very useful book. Not meant for people who want to learn C but for people who look to improve efficiency and readability of their code. Discusses the C9X standard but sadly does not provide a list of compilers which support it if any. I give this book an A.

This book didn't teach me any new or exciting aspects of the C language. The title suggests that this book is going to let the dog of the leash and go wild with the C language but no. The content focuses on the latest C9X standards alot and displays some examples of nice algorithms that have been thought up before by someone else. Great is your a 'strictly by the rules' programmer, but its not for me. There are many good things that can be done in C programming which are non compliant with the C9X standards, particularly inter-system processes, and these are the kind of things I would like to see published in a book of this sort.? It's a pretty basic book which whines on about standards too much and nothing like the title makes out. It focuses on what you can or can't do within the rules of the C9X standards and its quite amusing that the title contradicts the contents of the book. Another one for the charity shop.

I found this book to be very poorly written and unsatisfactory. It contained lots of bad algorithms and poor coding. Much of the code was unusable and the methods explained were very simple. I could have done without it to be honest. Avoid this book if you want to learn how to program properly