September 2025
Intermediate to advanced
552 pages
14h 5m
English
Content preview from Modern C, Third Edition
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9 Style
This chapter covers
- Writing readable code
- Formatting code
- Naming identifiers
Programs serve a dual purpose. First, as we have already seen, they serve to give instructions to the compiler and the final executable. But equally important, they document the intended behavior of a system for the people (users, customers, maintainers, lawyers, and so on) who have to deal with it. Therefore, we have a prime directive.
The difficulty with that directive is knowing what constitutes “readable.” Not all experienced C programmers agree, so we will begin by trying to establish a minimal list of necessities. The first thing we must have in mind when discussing the human condition is that ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.