Introduction

C code. C code run. Run code run...please!

—Barbara Ling

All C programs do the same thing: look at a character and do nothing with it.

—Peter Weinberger

Have you ever noticed that there are plenty of C books with suggestive names like C Traps and Pitfalls, or The C Puzzle Book, or Obfuscated C and Other Mysteries, but other programming languages don’t have books like that? There’s a very good reason for this!

C programming is a craft that takes years to perfect. A reasonably sharp person can learn the basics of C quite quickly. But it takes much longer to master the nuances of the language and to write enough programs, and enough different programs, to become an expert. In natural language terms, this is the difference between ...

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