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C Pocket Reference
book

C Pocket Reference

by Peter Prinz, Ulla Kirch-Prinz
November 2002
Beginner to intermediate
142 pages
4h 19m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from C Pocket Reference

Introduction

The programming language C was developed in the 1970s by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, New Jersey) in the process of implementing the Unix operating system on a DEC PDP-11 computer. C has its origins in the typeless programming language BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language, developed by M. Richards) and in B (developed by K. Thompson). In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie produced the first publicly available description of C, now known as the K&R standard.

C is a highly portable language oriented towards the architecture of today’s computers. The actual language itself is relatively small and contains few hardware-specific elements. It includes no input/output statements or memory management techniques, for example. Functions to address these tasks are available in the extensive C standard library.

C’s design has significant advantages:

  • Source code is highly portable

  • Machine code is efficient

  • C compilers are available for all current systems

The first part of this pocket reference describes the C language, and the second part is devoted to the C standard library. The description of C is based on the ANSI X3.159 standard. This standard corresponds to the international standard ISO/IEC 9899, which was adopted by the International Organization for Standardization in 1990, then amended in 1995 and 1999. The ISO/IEC 9899 standard can be ordered from the ANSI web site; see http://ansi.org/public/std_info.html.

The 1995 standard is supported by all ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596004362Errata Page