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C Primer Plus 5th Edition
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The new classic! C Primer Plus, now in its 5th edition, has been revised to include over 20 new programming exercises, newly improved examples and the new ANSI/ISO standard, C99. Task-oriented examples will teach you the fundamentals of C programming. From extended integer types and compound literals to Boolean support and variable-length arrays, you will learn to create practical and real-world applications with C programming. Review questions and programming exercises at the end of each chapter will reinforce what you have learned. This friendly and easy-to-use self-study guide will help you understand the fundamentals of this core programming language.
- ISBN-100672326965
- ISBN-13978-0672326967
- Edition5th
- PublisherSams
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 2004
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions7.5 x 2.25 x 9.25 inches
- Print length959 pages
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C Programming Language, 2nd EditionPaperback
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Stephen Prata teaches astronomy, physics, and programming at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California. He received his B.S. from the California Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His association with computers began with the computer modeling of star clusters. Stephen has authored or coauthored over a dozen books, including C++ Primer Plus and Unix Primer Plus.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
C Primer Plus
Preface
C was a relatively little-known language when the first edition of C Primer Plus was written in 1984. Since then, the language has boomed, and many people have learned C with the help of this book. In fact, over 500,000 people have purchased C Primer Plus throughout its various editions.
As the language has grown from the early informal K&R standard through the 1990 ISO/ANSI standard to the 1999 ISO/ANSI standard, so has this book matured through this, the fifth edition. As with all the editions, my aim has been to create an introduction to C that is instructive, clear, and helpful.
Approach and Goals
My goal is for this book to serve as a friendly, easy-to-use, self-study guide. To accomplish that objective, C Primer Plus employs the following strategies:
Programming concepts are explained, along with details of the C language; the book does not assume that you are a professional programmer.
Many short, easily typed examples illustrate just one or two concepts at a time, because learning by doing is one of the most effective ways to master new information.
Figures and illustrations clarify concepts that are difficult to grasp in words alone.
Highlight boxes summarize the main features of C for easy reference and review.
Review questions and programming exercises at the end of each chapter allow you to test and improve your understanding of C.
To gain the greatest benefit, you should take as active a role as possible in studying the topics in this book. Don't just read the examples, enter them into your system, and try them. C is a very portable language, but you may find differences between how a program works on your system and how it works on ours. Experimentchange part of a program to see what the effect is. Modify a program to do something slightly different. Ignore the occasional warnings and see what happens when you do the wrong thing. Try the questions and exercises. The more you do yourself, the more you will learn and remember.
I hope that you'll find this newest edition an enjoyable and effective introduction to the C language.
© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.
Product details
- Publisher : Sams; 5th edition (January 1, 2004)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 959 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0672326965
- ISBN-13 : 978-0672326967
- Item Weight : 3.54 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.5 x 2.25 x 9.25 inches
- Customer Reviews:
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When I entered the wonderful world of programming, I chose Visual Basic .NET. This language was famous for being easy to learn. What I didn't know was that it had grown into something more complex, and .NET is a bit tougher to learn than any of the previous versions. So I thought it would only be natural that I needed to buy a couple of books to master the language.
The more books I bought, the more I got sick and tired of authors who weren't able to follow simple naming conventions. Another annoying thing with .NET books is that you can find one sentence in almost all of them saying, "You don't need to know this" when it comes to using built-in functions. Whether I need to know something or not is my decision, not the author's decision. So the author's job is to explain it, and if I really "don't need to know it", I can skip the section. But to make matters worse, most authors didn't even switch to .NET and continued writing bad code as they did with previous versions of Visual Basic, which has nothing to do with .NET. In consequence, I switched to C#, hoping that things would get better.
After the switch, I could still use my Visual Basic .NET books because the syntax is so similar. But I decided to buy some C# books since I hoped that quality would get better. In fact, quality did get much better. But another problem was still the same: most beginning .NET books are too trivial, too superficial, and too incomplete. For a good start with .NET, you need quite a couple of books. The nine books on .NET I own range from beginner topics to advanced topics, but I still find it's incomplete and much too superficial. Not even all the books together give me the information I want.
In terms of syntax, C# and C++ are quite similar. If you can read C# code, then you can read C++ code and vice versa. I know that many C++ book authors go a bit deeper, so I decided to buy a book on C++ to see if that could provide me with the information I want and need. After some research, I ordered C++ Primer Plus mainly based on the excellent reviews here at Amazon.
The reader arrived quickly, and I started immediately. After the first chapter, I knew I had wasted a lot of money - on the nine books I own, that is. This one is a beginner's book, but it goes much deeper than all the other books I own together. If I had known this before, you can be damn sure that C++ Primer Plus would be the only beginner's book on my shelf.
The author has written a true jewel - coherently, concise, and fun to read. It even covers topics that you can't find in advanced .NET books, so I guess another switch is about to happen.
If I had to vote for the best beginner's programming book, this is it. No matter at what level you are, this book is great to have on your shelf. You'll appreciate Stephen's talent to get you started in case you've never touched programming before. If you think you're advanced, put this book on your shelf - it's great for reference as well. Fed up with superficial .NET? Come over to C++, Stephen makes it so simple. Want to continue with .NET? No problem, I have nine books for sale.
I bought this book almost two years ago. On my first run I read the thing up to Chapter 9, this only took me less than a month, for it is written in a very relaxed way. In that month I was on vacations, and I gave three to four hours for of my daily time to this book, which is not very much considering you have to work through examples and stuff. As I was reading it I was conscious that I was becoming in love with the text and explanations, and more importantly, I was loving C++ (well, more C up to that point). Once I entered college as a freshman I had to stop because it was way too demanding for me to seriously work on the book, but in my programming classes I was a complete master. This book is so detailed that even if we worked in C and not C++ (Introduction to Programming was the course) I was able to achieve an A+ without breaking a sweat. This particular course is known to be a serious slut in my college: almost 50% of the class has to retake it.
As timed passed I kept coming back to reread some chapters that had valuable information and that proved to me how good a reference this books also is: the first time I read it, I thought that you HAD to read it from beginning to end, but jumping into chapters is very possible. I was also beginning to advance through the book although at a very slow pace. Until a year ago I was still on chapter 14. This time I took Object Oriented Programming course, and here too, I was top of the class, even If the course is given in the Java programming language. The concepts of OOP are so universal and Prata does such a nice job teaching about the public interface, containment, encapsulation, and other concepts, that even when exposed to a very different language, I was able to succeed.
Two years later I decided that I had had too much and read the whole deal in two weeks. Yes, from chapter 1 to 17 and the appendices. Finally, after reading the "What now?" section at the end of chapter 17, I felt that it was right to write the review, but hadn't had the time. Now I do, and I think my weird experience with it gives me the right to recommend the book in two lights: as an amazing tutorial and reference. Yes, you'll probably have to work through other books (Effective C++ by Meyers, Algorithms in C++ by Sedgewick, STL by Josuttis, and finally The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup) to be a good and efficient C++ programmer, but this is your best way to start.
Some people say that after reading this you should read C++ Primer (no plus). Well, this was not the case for me. I have worked through all the books mentioned in the parenthesis above, and I never felt lost, never (Stroustrup's was read last I must add). I have read books on DirectX and 3D math (more specifically, Luna's and Dun y Parberry's), and on others topics too (that require some C++), and this book did me much justice.
Hope this helps.
Top reviews from other countries
A book of programming very clear. The author refers to others languages so the book is more orientated for programmers and developers (not beginners). There is no need to know C language. The organization of the book is based on the object-oriented programming, the author makes some comparisons/differences between C and C++.




