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K. N. King

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C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition 2nd Edition

by K. N. King (Author)

4.4 344 ratings

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The first edition of C Programming: A Modern Approach was popular with students and faculty alike because of its clarity and comprehensiveness as well as its trademark Q&A sections.

Professor King's spiral approach made it accessible to a broad range of readers, from beginners to more advanced students. With adoptions at over 225 colleges, the first edition was one of the leading C textbooks of the last ten years. The second edition maintains all the book's popular features and brings it up to date with coverage of the C99 standard. The new edition also adds a significant number of exercises and longer programming projects, and includes extensive revisions and updates.

ISBN-10

0393979504
ISBN-13

978-0393979503
Edition

2nd
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

April 19, 2008
Language

English
Dimensions

7.5 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches
Print length

832 pages
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About the Author

K. N. King (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgia State University. He is the author of Modula-2: A Complete Guide and Java Programming: From the Beginning.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; 2nd edition (April 19, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 832 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393979504
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393979503
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1.1 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #241,341 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #21 in C Programming Language
- #115 in Computer Programming Languages
- #609 in Computer Software (Books)

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4.4 344 ratings

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Customer reviews

344 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Customers say

Customers find the book clearly written with a gradual approach. They appreciate the good exercises and examples. Readers also mention the book offers a deep learning experience and is a good guide to programming. They say the material is good and they are engaged with it.

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Clarity Programming examples Material quality Value for money

34 customers mention "Clarity"34 positive0 negative

Customers find the book clearly written with a gradual approach. They appreciate the thorough explanations and examples all throughout. Readers also mention the book is methodical for newbies and can be used by experienced ones. In addition, they say it's technical, terse, well-structured, and efficient for understanding the language.

"The book is written in a way that it almost leaves no gaps in the topics it addresses.At the same time, reading it does not become tedious." Read more

"...The programming exercises are just challenging enough to push you a bit beyond your comfort zone without feeling impossible, and there are many..." Read more

"...Not only is it well written and approachable, there are numerous end of chapter exercises that allow you to implement chapter specific techniques...." Read more

"...The Q&A sections at the end of each chapter are very well done. The exercises and programming projects help to amplify the material presented...." Read more

30 customers mention "Programming examples"30 positive0 negative

Customers find the programming examples in the book engaging and thorough. They say the book offers a deep learning experience with a terse writing style. Readers mention the exercises are mostly understandable and provide enormous information.

"...your comfort zone without feeling impossible, and there are many interesting problems to pick and choose from...." Read more

"...Not only is it well written and approachable, there are numerous end of chapter exercises that allow you to implement chapter specific techniques...." Read more

"...The exercises are mostly understandable but, some I couldn't figure out what the problem was looking for...." Read more

"K&R (The C Programming Language) offers a deep learning experience with a terse writing style...." Read more

10 customers mention "Material quality"10 positive0 negative

Customers find the book's material good, engaging, and easy to follow. They say it has enough material so that they can find many common standard libraries. Readers also mention the book is dense but good.

"...There's enough material so that you can find many common standard library functions or core C concepts referenced over and over throughout the book...." Read more

"Good material. Lots if examples." Read more

"...I am both engaged with and able to use the material. Sample programs are great, exercises are great. I love this book." Read more

"...The book is conveniently arranged so that the material is easy to find when you're programming and have a quick question...." Read more

5 customers mention "Value for money"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well worth the cost of a permanent copy.

"Meant to be used at a computer testing and observing the code. Well worth the cost of a permanent copy. Great reference...." Read more

"This book is really great, very thorough and detailed. I loved it. Expensive but worth every penny I paid for it. No regrets at all!" Read more

"Great deal on a great book!" Read more

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Z

A Modern Classic!

Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

I am a first-year comp sci student (although I have a degree in an unrelated field) who was due to start an algorithm/problem solving class that would be focused on C. Although the class had no assigned textbook, I figured if I'm going to be using C, I'd better learn what I'm doing. I had tried previously to learn C with K&R, but I didn't make much progress. Too many of the programming practice problems given in K&R were frankly just too difficult for a beginner who is self-teaching. I decided to pick up another textbook. After extensive research, King's book seemed to be one of the most consistently and highly recommended.

I started working through King's book a couple weeks before the class started to try and keep ahead of the class material. I can't say enough good things about this textbook. It is thorough but clear, and includes plenty of code examples to learn from. The programming exercises are just challenging enough to push you a bit beyond your comfort zone without feeling impossible, and there are many interesting problems to pick and choose from. There's enough material so that you can find many common standard library functions or core C concepts referenced over and over throughout the book. This really helps to see how the guts of C work in different contexts. The writing style is pleasant. King manages to keep what most would consider a very dry subject entertaining and fun, without losing any of the rigor you'd expect from a textbook. That's quite an achievement.

Thanks partially to this book I finished the class with a perfect 100% score.

32 people found this helpful

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Dmytro H.

Total C-knowledge source

Reviewed in the United States on July 14, 2024

Verified Purchase

The book is written in a way that it almost leaves no gaps in the topics it addresses.
At the same time, reading it does not become tedious.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Sohail Khan

... realized that the hard way doesn't build up a good foundation of knowledge

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2014

Verified Purchase

I was using Zed Shaw's Learn C The Hard Way and realized that the hard way doesn't build up a good foundation of knowledge. I needed something that I can use to learn some basic aspects of the C language and this does the job. Not only is it well written and approachable, there are numerous end of chapter exercises that allow you to implement chapter specific techniques. I respect Zed's approach, but sometimes things need to taken out of context of the bigger picture to appreciate the constructs.

Later on in the book, KN King tackles on some C standard library specifics header by header. I appreciate how I can quickly figure out what each function of the standard library does after reading the back of the book reference. The chapter on the C Preprocessor has allowed me to make some pretty cool macros and understand how they all unwind. In addition, good practices are also mentioned, although not as frequent as in Zed Shaw's book. All in all KN King really does elucidate the language with this book.

30 people found this helpful

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Jake Wilson

Great content but, some exercises are unclear. Less than half the answers are provided.

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2022

Verified Purchase

I am a novice C programmer. I've taken half a dozen courses on different languages. I've taken several courses on C. This book has great content and covers the right topics. The exercises are mostly understandable but, some I couldn't figure out what the problem was looking for. About 1/3 of the answers to the exercises are available at the provided URL at the beginning of the book. The answers to programming projects however are not available. To make matters worse, the projects ask that you modify programs that you don't have access to. To complete the problem, you have to retype in several pages of code. This is nuts! I emailed the author and he didn't reply for the rest of the answers. Lastly, whatever ink they used to print the book smells which is a bit distracting when reading it for hours. Overall, glad I purchased this book because I'm learning.

6 people found this helpful

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Bob Nelson

Engaging, approachable and ACCURATE

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2008

Verified Purchase

I ordered K.N. King's ``C Programming: A Modern Approach (Second Edition)'' from Amazon for my recent birthday. Having had more birthdays than I care to admit, this gift to myself is right up there with a Lionel train set I got for my eighth birthday (not from Amazon, of course -- it didn't exist that long ago but passengers trains sure did :)).

In this second edition, I think that KNK is now the logical heir to K&R. That's not meant as blasphemy -- Kernighan and Ritchie's still great volume is around 20 years of age and it's unlikely they'll be getting together for K&R3. The C language has undergone enough changes (with the amendment of 1994) and C99, that a ``Modern Approach'' really is needed.

There's another author familiar to readers of the comp.lang.c newsgroup for his approachable, engaging writing style. That author is a wonderful writer but doesn't let the truth get in the way of good narrative. King, though, is an equally engaging writer but is obviously passionate about correctness and adhering to the C standard. He's also meticulous about portability so that the examples are written in pure C and not some platform-specific variant.

I've the entire book and can find hardly anything even nitpick. Aside from a minor style difference about using parentheses with the ``sizeof'' operator, which King explains his rationale for doing so, that's about it.

His explanation of C99 (and the differences from C90 are clearly indicated) made me aware of some really nice features of the current standard for the language (and makes me wonder why one very notable compiler implementer hasn't yet supported C99).

In short, get this book. The Q&A sections at the end of each chapter are very well done. The exercises and programming projects help to amplify the material presented. And King's examples will teach you more about barcodes and ISBN numbers than you ever thought possible.

If you can appreciate the work of a fine craftsman in film such as Martin Scorsese, you'll find that King is of that caliber in the realm of lucidly dealing with this technical subject.

70 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Cliente de Amazon

PIRACY COPY

Reviewed in Mexico on September 26, 2022

Verified Purchase

PIRACY COPY

N. CLAY

The best C introduction I've read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 4, 2023

Verified Purchase

This is a great book. And it also shows a new programmer the idioms in common usage in industry - that's very valuable. I've tried to learn C a couple of times and this book really got me into it. There are other famous books which are inferior to this one imo.

Karen

Concise and well explained.

Reviewed in Canada on December 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

I usually hate textbooks because they’re expensive and full of useless filler. This textbook is expensive, but there’s zero filler here. Just concise explanations and good exercises. This was one of the few textbooks that I actually used often and it really helped me study. Definitely recommend it.

Víctor

First programming languaje

Reviewed in Spain on June 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

Excelent book. C is the first programming languaje I'm learning, and this book has many things to teach. I'm still in Chapter 17 "Advanced use of pointers", but I already feel comfortable giving this book 5 starts.

It's filled with exercises and examples. The explanations about concepts are as easy to understand as they can be. It also contains many references to other parts of the book that are related to the current subject, or to remind you about a term that was explained "in the past". It also contains references to other books, in case you want to dive deeper into something more specific.

In my opinión it is very nicely written, you feel like the author is talking to you, trying to make you understand things. It's not a "cold" book. Hopefully the next 10 chapters will be similar.

65€ well spent.

Benjamin King

Precise and complete, very well written, highly recommended

Reviewed in Germany on October 25, 2016

Verified Purchase

As a professional C++ developer, I am aware that most of C technically is part of C++. In practice, when reading plain C code, I often realize that idiomatic C is very different from idiomatic C++. I have turned to this book in order to get a clearer understanding of the capabilities and limitations of C as a language. It was important to me to get a reasonably current description, covering at least the C99 standard.

The audience that the author addresses is broader, but my questions about C have all been answered very well. The writing style is simple and to the point while also being precise (as far as I can tell). For example, the very first explanation of "const" goes like this:
"An array that's been declared const should not be modified by the program; the compiler will detect direct attempts to modify an element."
To me, this is a very approachable explanation for the role as "const" as a declaration of intent rather than something that can totally be relied on.

I also felt at home with how alternative usages of language features are presented. Rather than just telling what are "best practices", the author explains briefly that alternatives exist, which ones are more popular and gives some explanation on why that might be so.

What I needed to get used to were the numerous forward references that are made. Topics are introduced gradually with finer points being forward referred to which happens either in a Questions and Answers part following a chapter or a later chapter. This can be a distraction, but I found it to be executed very well here.

The editing is also exceptionally good. Many newer technical books that I have read lately lack in this regard, which I often find very distracting. This is clearly not the case here, I did not spot a single typo.

Contentwise I believe this to be a complete description of the language with an amount of detail that seems just right for me as a practitioner. I really appreciate that I did not have to wade through hundreds of pages of standard legalese that plages many C++ books. The chapter topics and their sequence make sense to me, although I was hoping to approach the topic of pointers vs arrays more quickly.

The author clearly marks language features that came to C with C99, both in a sidebar and by providing extra chapters where necessary. This is fairly important when working with the language in practice and I believe that a lot of effort went into making this work in the book.

The library reference explains all functions well. While I think that it is more convenient to look things up in a manpage, I appreciate the amount of effort spent to get this reference part of the book right.

If the above does not convince you yet, the book even has an ASCII table in the book, which gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling in the heart.

So all in all, I can highly recommend the book to developers who like to brush up their C skills!

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