[Sussex] C Programming

[Geoff Teale]

Morning,

On Fri, 2003-11-28 at 08:57, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> Guys,
> 
> Last night a few of us were talking about the Printer Driver that
> Geoff's developing and I mentioned that my C programming was lacking.
> 
> Can you recommend a book/website that can help me learn it properly? I
> bought a book by Deitel and Deitel (sp?) a few years back, it told you
> what the code did, but not how it can apply in real life.  I find I
> learn better if I can apply it to the real world, so if there are any
> books that do this, that would be great.
> 
> Answers on a postcard please... :p

OK, well the thing is, if you buy a book on C it will tell you all about
the language and the standard libraries - that very useful, but unless
you're writing a very basic command line application this isn't going to
get you very far.

I suggest that you first decide what project it is you want to do and
then look for API documentation for the technologies you need.  As you
say, the best way to learn is hands-on.

A good start for Linux C programming however would be:

Advanced Linux Programming
==========================
(Multiple Contributors)
New Riders, 
ISBN 0-7357-1043-0

This book covers the basics of GCC,  GNU coding standards, process
management, thread management, interprocess communication, handling
devices, the /proc filesystem, and the core system calls.

If you still feel you need a better C core reference the definitive work
is of course:

The C Programming Language
==========================
Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie
Prentice Hall 
ISBN 0131103628


Otherwise I'd point you in the direction of more general manuals:

The GNU C Library Manual
========================
This is available on-line at:
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/

... but if you find it useful I would strongly urge you to buy the books
and support GNU.

POSIX Programmer's Guide
========================
Donald Lewine
O'Reilly & Associates
0-937175-73-0

... and if you want to do some GUI programming in C then I suggest you
head over to http://www.gtk.org and read the tutorials.

-- 
GJT 
gteale at cmedltd.com 

I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!