Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline of Programming with C

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With their low cost and their wide availability in college bookstores, the Schaum's Outline Series has helped many students in the past decades. In technical areas, the books in the Series are noted for being example wizards, and therefore are also of assistance to instructors. In this book on C programming, the author has continued this tradition, and has produced a book that turns out to be one of the best ways to learn this language. C can be difficult and abtruse at times, particularly in the use of pointer arithmetic, in string manipulation, and in memory management, but the author, again through many examples, clears up nicely any nagging issues in writing programs in C. C is still heavily used in applications, particularly when performance is an issue, and only in recent years has it been seriously replaced by its descendant, C++. The material in the book is pretty standard, and no really imaginative uses of C are outlined, such as how to use C to do self-reference function calling or how to emulate functional programming using C. However, for one needing an introduction to C, or for one who is teaching C in the classroom, this book would be a good supplement if cognizance is taken of current programming standards in C.

The preface by the author suggests that the second (current) edtion reflects the current ANSI standard.

('The sample programs conforms to the ANSI C standard').

I found examples where it does not:

On page 294, the author states that 'an array within a function MUST be defined as a STATIC array so that it can be initialized'.

The are numerous examples which correspond the classic C but not the ANSI C:

Exmaples 10.14, 10.12..

A statement on page 215: 'automatic arrays can not be initialized" is not also correct'.

The back cover of the book suggests: 'if your goal is better comprehension or top grades. this powerful study tool [...] is the closest thing to a guarantee you will find anywhere'.

In fact, if your answers during an exam are based on the examples cited, you are expected to get a lower grade.

Easy to read, lots of examples, challenging exercise problems and programming assignments - you don't ask for much more. This book can be used as a textbook or as a supplement to another book on the C programming language.

You want C, you got C.

I like the fact that there are a lot of solved examples and they have been properly explained.

I have been teaching introduction to programming with C for almost two decades and over that time many students have asked me for a source for additional programming problems. My answer has always been the latest edition of Schaum's outline in Programming in C. The problems are sound and challenging and working through the solutions is great practice in the art of paper debugging. While interactive buggers are a godsend, performing critical visual reviews of code is a skill that is still essential for the good programmer.
While this outline is somewhat dated, having been published in 1990, the base language of C is still the same. I still recommend it to students who need more practice in visual debugging skills.

C is not a large language, there's not a lot to remember a far as conditionals, types, etc... but there is much to learn. This book gives only the facts and not dogma or methodologies, and the examples are to the point as they should be. This book really should be hardbound and sitting next to your copy of The C Programming language by DR and BK. This manila tome is truly one of the hidden gems you can get for 15 bucks. Use it until the pages fall apart, by then you will have assimulated it's worthwhile knowledge.

You really have to enjoy this book for it's straightforwardness. If you like the "Dummies" series, this book will progress a bit too fast for you, for it is rather complete in it's description of the language features. But if you read and digest technical matters in one or two (or three) gulps, you'll benefit from this book.

This is one of the excellent books in programming. I have come to master C programming in less than two months by following this book page by page. Chapters are organized in an excellent way that goes systematically with programming skills development. I highly recommend it.

Contrary to the other reviewers, i believe this book is pretty decent in its instruction. The programming examples are some of the most comprehensive i've seen in any book. There may be a few errors, but no book is perfect. The language of the book is simple and easy to understand. While certain advanced topics havent been covered, its a good book to start with in C programming. --Sachit

I hadn't used much C in a long time before needing it for a training class at work. Other than writing a few filters in C for the unix shell (which could have been done in Perl) I really hadn't written more than a couple hundred lines in a few years--as the saying goes, "use it or lose it". So I really needed a good way to brush up on the details of this elegant little language. Some C books are too clever; and it's confusing, and some are too over-simplified; and you miss crucial details. I found this book to be extremely well written, full of good detail and examples, and I felt that it served as a very good review of the language. It brought everything back into memory and even taught me some new things (like initializing automatic variables at the point of declaration with entire expressions including function calls instead of just direct assignment or const-like expressions). C is rapidly becoming a matter of antiquity, and "old school" language that probably *hurts* your resume more than helping it. However, because of Linux building with gcc, and the Solaris source code being released (with AT&T copyrights going back the Reagan/Gorbechev era!!) there is still reason why this cherished language still stands the test of time. OS X is based on FreeBSD, many browsers, interpreters and compilers are still written in C. In short, its still a major part of the world's computing infrastructure but gets ZERO respect in the commercial marketplace. However, unix programmers, legacy coders and hobbyists will still need to learn this language which is, to this day, indellibly burned in to the manual pages of unix. This book deserves to be remembered both as a good place to start, and a good place to brush up if you've fallen off the wagon for some time and need to get back on board.

USEFUL FOR BEGGINERS CAN BE USED AS A REFERENCE MANUAL NEED SOME MORE PROGRAMMING EXAMPLES