The Standard C Library (Paperback)

by P.J. Plauger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Prentice Hall's most important C programming title in years. A companion volume to Kernighan & Ritchie's C PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE. A collection of reusable functions (code for building data structures, code for performing math functions and scientific calculations, etc.) which will save C programmers time and money especially when working on large programming projects. The C Library is part of the ANSI (American National Standard Institute) for the C Language. This new book contains the complete code for the library. It covers elements of the library with which even the most experienced C programmers are not familiar such as internationalization (the ability to write programs that can adapt to different cultural locales, for example, using the C library, programmers can write software that manipulates large character sets such as Kanji). Structured like the Standard C Library, it contains 15 headers declaring or defining all of the names in the library. A separate chapter covers each header, including excerpts from relevant portions of the C Standard showing all codes needed to implement each portion of the library and explaining why it is necessary. The book teaches readers the concepts and design issues associated with library building. Using this book, programemrs will be less likely to re-code something that already exists in a given program. Plauger is one of the world's leading experts on C and the C Library.

From the Publisher
This is the first comprehensive treatment of ANSI and ISO standards for the C Library. Written by a world renowned author on the C programming language and the head of the ANSI committee that standardized the C Library, this new guide contains the complete code of the Standard C Library and includes practical advice on using all 15 headers. All C programmers will benefit from the book's focus on the concepts, design issues, and trade-offs associated with library building; using this book, programmers will make the best use of the C Library and will learn to build programs with maximum portability and reusability.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (July 11, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131315099
• ISBN-13: 978-0131315099
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #209,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Written by Plauger in when he was at his sharpest., May 13, 1997

By A Customer

P.J. Plauger was operating at full-tilt when he wrote this excellent guide to the implementation and use of the C library. In particular, his treament (and history) of <stdio.h> is outstanding. Unfortunately, the Plauger of recent history is apparently being held captive by Microsoft. His "C/C++ User's Journal" is brimming with non-portable Windows topics of little value to those interested in Standard C and, of course, the Unix platform...where C began. Plauger has apparently forgotten the roots of the C programming language. Nonetheless, this is among the five "must have" books for the serious C programmer

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Book on the Standard C Library, August 22, 2000

By	"microtherion" (Sim City, CA (Somewhere in the Bay Area)) - See all my reviews

This outstanding book integrates three treatments of the Standard C library: The straight text from the standard, a commentary, and a prototype implementation. All of these show Plauger at his best.

Even though the implementation does not always look elegant (and unfortunately is not open source), it provides a high quality implementation of each aspect of the standard and is extremely instructive (I found the stdio formatting code and the math routines particularly interesting).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice about Standard C Library implementation, October 22, 2005

By	Jos van Roosmalen (The Netherlands, Europe) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First of all (also metioned by other reviewers), the layout of this book is horror. Everything is printed behind each other (not very much whitespace).

This book is a nice reference, but maybe you can better use Internet nowadays.

What make this book really nice, is that it offers implementations for the standard C library. So if you're looking for a implementation for sqrt/sin/tan/printf/etc. you will find it in this book. This is a really nice way to get some insight how an implementation of a Standard C Library could work.