From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Sep 16 12:32:20 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA18223 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Wed, 16 Sep 1998 12:32:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from homer.talcom.net ([209.5.1.4]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA18174 for ; Wed, 16 Sep 1998 12:32:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from leo@homer.talcom.net) Received: (from leo@localhost) by homer.talcom.net (8.8.8/8.8.5) id PAA17144; Wed, 16 Sep 1998 15:33:08 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <19980916153308.53065@talcom.net> Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 15:33:08 -0400 From: Leo Papandreou To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Learning C on FreeBSD... References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89i In-Reply-To: ; from Nathan Ahlstrom on Tue, Sep 15, 1998 at 04:10:28PM -0500 X-Organization: Once neatly stacked a pile of paper. X-Wife: Forgotten but not gone. X-No-Archive: Yes Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, Sep 15, 1998 at 04:10:28PM -0500, Nathan Ahlstrom wrote: > > > > > I wouldn't recommend the Kernighan/Ritchie book as a first book, although > > it is a good book on C. Probably a more authorative source for C would be > > any book by Herbert Schildt, Osborne/McGraw Hill Press. Check out: > > http://www.osborne.com > > > > The Kernighan/Ritchie book _is_ the authorative source for C. You may as well pick up Programming in the Unix Environment by the same authors, too. It will introduce you to the shell, make, sed, awk, lex, yacc, etc. There is even a section on the unix text formatting tools in case you want to document your programs to be understood by the man command. Slim, inexpensive and highly recommended. > The book > that you are suggesting is probably easier for a C newcomer to understand. > Herbert Schildt is also known affectionately as Herbert Bullschildt on comp.lang.c for reasons that have nothing to do with his engaging writing style :-) Puritanism (and outright errors) aside, he invokes things like void main() which is not a good habit to get into in a unix environment. His Annotations to Standard C (I'm not sure about exact title, have not read it, myself) are a running joke and there is even has a web site annotating the errors in the Annotations. His books are also very Windows centric. Both K&R books are easy to understand and extremely well written. If you have experience with any other procedural language, there is no point fretting over the decision: buy K&R's The C Programming Language. There are also plenty of tutorials on the web if you want or need dumbed down but possibly inaccurate information. > > Nathan Ahlstrom > nrahlstr@winternet.com > Run FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/ > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message