Practical C Programming 3rd Edition

ISBN  1-56592-306-5   Price £21.95  UK
Steve Oualline                 23 Chapters, 4 appendices, Glossary and index in 375 pages
 

Chapter List

                xv   Preface

            I.  Basics

            1  What is C ?
            2  Basics of Program Writing
            3  Style
            4  Basic Declarations and Expressions
            5  Arrays, Qualifiers and Reading Numbers
            6  Decision and Control Statements
            7  Programming Process

            II.  Simple Programming

            8  More Control Statements
            9  Variable Scope and Functions
            10 C Preprocessor
            11  Bit Operations
            12  Advanced Types
            13  Simple Pointers
            14  File Input/Output
            15  Debugging and Optimisation
            16  Floating Point

            III.  Advanced Programming Concepts

            17  Advanced Pointers
            18  Modular Programming
            19  Ancient Compilers
            20  Portability Problems
            21  C's Dustier Corners
            22  Putting it All Together
            23  Programming Adages

            IV.  Other Programming Features

                A  ASCII Table
                B  Ranges and Parameter Passing Conversions
                C  Operator Precedence Rules
                D  AAA Program to Compute a Sine Using a Power Series

                    Glossary
                    Index

Synopsis

        Both this book and the ones published by Wrox Press and Sams are very good.  Just a case of what you want ?  With this publication you get a lot of things that are not in the other books.  Even MS Windows is mentioned.

Review

        One of the early comments in the book is that "there is only one way to learn how to program and that is to write programs".  This makes sense to just about everyone I know who works in the business or even in a University.  In the next chapter it goes on to explain the basics of program writing.  IDEs are introduced and Turbo C++, Borland (Imprise) C++ and Microsoft C++ are shown as nice easy to understand pictures that even I can get to grips with.  Why is it that so many University lecturers don't use these kind of ideas ?

Next the subject of programming style is discussed.  Since MS Windows came along so much of this has been forgotten about and we see web pages and even full sized programs written with the sort of lack of thought and planning that is normally associated with down town planning in an American or English city.  This is the best explanation I have seen in any book anywhere.  It gives a clear and easy to understand list of facts in only ten pages.  There is a quote at the front of chapter three which says....

" There is no programing language, no matter how structured, that will prevent programmers from writing bad programs. -- L. Flon "

and

"  It is the nobility of their style which will make our writers of the 1840s unreadable forty years from now.  -- Stendhal  "

If you know how very true this is you won't argue with it.  We know that the programmers of the 1970s and 1980s are little understood by our present day "IT experts".  The rest of the book goes on to declarations and expressions, structured programming, pointers, advanced pointers and all the rest of it.

As is explained in the book.  This is all about practical C programming and there's plenty of evidence that the author does a good job of explaining the practical ins and outs of things rather than just explaining a few vague ideas.  Steve Oualline is said to have written his first program when he was eleven.  He now works as a software engineer in southern California.  His spare time activity is to do with steam trains on the local railways.

If you are one of those rich people who can afford a book and you want to learn a bit more about C programming then you should consider buying this book.
 
 

Colophon

" The animal featured on the cover of Practical C Programming is a Jersey cow.  The Jersey, one of the many breeds of modern cows, originated from a now extinct stock of wild cattle that inhabited Western Asia, North Africa and continental Europe.  Cows were first introduced into the Western hemisphere by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in 1493.  Jerseys, bred on the British island of Jersey since 1789, were first introduced to America in the 1850s.  Smallest of the modern dairy cows, this fawn coloured beast typically weighs between 1000 and 1500 pounds.  As a milk producer, Jerseys are the least prolific of any American dairy cow.  However, their milk is creamier than that of any other breed.  "

Review by  Richard Ibbotson