Software Tools in Pascal [Paperback]

Brian W. Kernighan (Author), P.J. Plauger (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201103427 | ISBN-13: 978-0201103427 | Publication Date: January 11, 1981 | Edition: 1

With the same style and clarity that characterized their highly acclaimed The Elements of Programming Style and Software Tools, the authors have written Software Tools in Pascal to teach how to write good Pascal programs that make good tools. The programs contained in the book are not artificial, but are actual tools that have proved valuable in the production of other programs. Structured programming and top-down design are emphasized and applied to every program, as are principles of sound design, testing, efficiency, and portability. All of the programs are complete and have been tested directly from the text. The programs are available in machine-readable form from Addison-Wesley. Software Tools in Pascal is ideal for use in a software engineering course, for a second course in programming, or as a supplement in any programming course. All programmers, professional and student, will find the book invaluable as a source of proven, useful programs for reading and study. Numerous exercises are provided to test comprehension and to extend the concepts presented in the book. 0201103427B04062001

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

With the same style and clarity that characterized their highly acclaimed The Elements of Programming Style and Software Tools, the authors have written Software Tools in Pascal to teach how to write good Pascal programs that make good tools. The programs contained in the book are not artificial, but are actual tools that have proved valuable in the production of other programs.

Structured programming and top-down design are emphasized and applied to every program, as are principles of sound design, testing, efficiency, and portability. All of the programs are complete and have been tested directly from the text. The programs are available in machine-readable form from Addison-Wesley.

Software Tools in Pascal is ideal for use in a software engineering course, for a second course in programming, or as a supplement in any programming course. All programmers, professional and student, will find the book invaluable as a source of proven, useful programs for reading and study. Numerous exercises are provided to test comprehension and to extend the concepts presented in the book.

0201103427B04062001

About the Author

Brian W. Kernighan works in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He is Consulting Editor for Addison-Wesley's Professional Computing Series and the author, with Dennis Ritchie, of The C Programming Language.

P.J. Plauger is President of Whitesmiths, Ltd., New York. Dr. Plauger received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from Michigan State University. He is a member of ACM, the American Physical Society, and the Science Fiction Writers of America.

0201103427AB04062001

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 11, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201103427
• ISBN-13: 978-0201103427
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #678,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great tuturial on how to write great software., March 25, 2000

By 

Tim Burlowski (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Software Tools in Pascal (Paperback)

This book was reccomended to me by a freind. Initially, I was not thrilled. After all, I didnt know Pascal, and didn't care to learn Pascal. Pascal to me is a langauge only used by some academics and those stuck in the mainframe world.

I write in C, C++, Java, Perl. What relevance could Pascal have?

Boy was I wrong. It really isn't a book about Pascal, it's a book about writing good software. Pascal is immaterial to the reader. It is just a langauge that is being used to illustrate good software design.

I did most of the examples in Perl or C, and learned a good deal about good design and good coding.

The programs are a bit simple, but unlike other books the examples really build on each other and seem like useful programs. Unike the typical toy java program, that you see in books.

I would reccomend this to anyone who is starting out in programming and would like solid principles to start with.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars should be rewritten for todays languages, July 14, 2009

By 

Kodjo A. Noagbodji (Kennesaw, Georgia) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Software Tools in Pascal (Paperback)

i read this book and felt that i was born at the wrong time. this book not only teaches you how to program tools, but how to be a good programmer. the authors believe (and i also do) that with the right tools, the programming job is always easier.

a tool should be a simple independent program that accepts input and produces output, with no interaction from the user. the concept of redirection and piping (dear to unix and linux users) is recurrent in the text.

because we programmers spend most of our time dealing with text, the tools presented deal with textual input. the reader will learn how to write tools similar to grep, ed, sed, sort, compare, tar, just to name a few.

the text and the code--complete, by the way--are amazingly short. another evidence of the power of tools coupled together.

you won't do much with the code, because it's old pascal and people have already done the right thing. especially with the creation of unix and c.

don't despair if you already know a modern programming language and feel like you are wasting you time on things like module inclusion, string representation, or string handling functions. remember that old pascal did not have these things we now take for granted.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must-have, April 23, 2008

By 

Evelien Snel (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Software Tools in Pascal (Paperback)

This book was recommended to me by one of my computer science teachers back in 1985 and I still use it! I have tried and tested all the programs in the book myself and I am still using some of them today.

I know these tools come standard with the Unix programming environment, but when I got the book I didn't have access to a Unix system. I needed these tools! (And occasionally I still need them, when working in a DOS-box or on OpenVMS.)

Apart from the practical use these programs have to me, I very much enjoy the writing style and the detailed explanations about which choices were made in the implementation and why these were the right choices.