27 Apr
2004
27 Apr
'04
10:33 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Tony Duell once stated:
What Tony said. _The C Programming Language_ by K&R is *the best* book on
learning C, period. It's one of two books on C that I have and I still use
it to this day (having started with C in 1990) even if it is only Appendix B
I use (Standard C Library). The other C book I have (and recommend) is _The
Standard C Library_ by P. J. Plauger. K&R teaches you C, while Plauger
teaches you the Standard C Library, and why it is the way it is (and gives
you a sample implementation of said library).
-spc (Oh wait ... I lied. I have three C books---the third being
Numerical Recipies in C)
>
> > Aztec C on the Apple ][ is a sorry, lazy, flea-ridden dog.
>
> Any C implementation for that era (1979) of micros is a
> pretty good find, IMHO.
C is a pretty poor match to the 6502 though---not enough stack space (one
page) and anything you get out of the compiler will probably be worse than
what you can do by hand in assembly. The 6809 is geared more towards C (and
higher level languages in general) than the 6502. Compilers for the 8080
(Z80) may produce mediocre code.
Although
I'd reccomend finding a C for the PC class, post
8086, (1985+) if what you want to learn is software.
If you want to learn C, install one of the free unices and run gcc. Oh,
and buy K&R -- you'll be glad you did. I couldn't understand any of the
'learn C in 2 weeks' type of books, I thoguht C was well beyond me. Then
I bought K&R and was writing simple programs the same afternoon. K&R is
expensiver per page I guess (it's a thin book), but it's full of
information, and it's logically set out.