C help please - C newbie

Some of the worst software around is written in C. Some of the best software around is written in C.

It ain't the language.

Why don't you tell us all exactly which features of C90-C99 are misrepresented or left out of K&R2? I'm especially interested in learning what things that would be of interest to the typical embedded systems programmer are left out of K&R2. Please enlighten me.

The Harbison & Steele book is an excellent reference, but a poor tutorial and definitely not the right book to learn C with.

For example?

And how would other C tutorial books would avoid this problem? They seem to pretty much universally assume a console.

Any why did you have such an incompetent newbie working on the project anyway? Do they take people fresh out of their first C programming course and throw them on small embedded systems where you work? Sounds like you guys must do really high quality stuff...

I still tend to use "C Primer Plus" as my basic reference for most things, I used it to learn C 15 or 20 years ago and still find it answers most of my questions, I don't know which edition I have though as my son has pinched it - Grrrrrhhhh :)

I would recommend it to beginners.

Mike Harding

... snip ...

Whenever a spare pin is available for a serial output. If there is a built in display better yet.

In article , Alan Balmer writes

No but you appear to be saying that you do... You do not. What is more I know many who would disagree with you about K&R for novices. You can not presume to speak for a NG anymore than I can. though I have spoken for the UK on C matters. Our normal UK experts to WG14 also does not recommend K&R for novices.

As they say empty vessels make most noise... I usually post on comp.std.c and the ISO WG14 mail list.

So will I.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.org

In article , Sheldon Simms writes

Not books on C for embedded use.

He was the project manager. His programming dated back to when K&R was the standard.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.org

In article , Alan Balmer writes

This is comp.arch.embeded. you mean every day regular machine specific self-hosted C

Likewise K&R

Yes.. go for the latest version. If you find the differences between versions confusing K&R will not help.

No.... but it is a good place to start. there is little point in learning a version of C that is not for your target... BTW AFAIK no-one inthe embedded world (or MS) uses "standard-C"

But what you are suggesting is WORSE. I said use a book that gives C for your platform as that will be closer to the current standard.

You are saying use a version of Standard C that is obsolete and has not been standard for 15->30 years, for which there are no current compilers.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ \/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/\ /\/\/ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.org

If you are aiming for small micros (8-bitters) rather than big ones (32-bit), then your best bet for learning to write good programs is to learn assembly first, and only when you have a lot of understanding and experiance on the micro should you look at C. That way you write C code that generates assembly suitable for small micros, rather than something suitable for bigger computers.

I'll hold my hand up for the new Forth, not the old FORTH. Optimised ANS Forths. As fast as C, wth a wonderful test and debug environment.

Honest, I did think before responding.

Stephen

-- Stephen Pelc, snipped-for-privacy@INVALID.mpeltd.demon.co.uk MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time

Pardon the French, Chris, but that's nonsense and you know it. It's irresponsible to artificially limit your consideration of K&R to the first edition (the other is not 25 years, but 15 years old), which has not been printed or sold for 15 years now.

These days, K&R for all means and purposes _is_ K&R2, not the ancient, completely out-of-print first edition. And K&R2 is only one full standard and a couple of relatively minor amendments behind, not "many standards behind".

Since I've yet to see any widely used C compiler, embedded or not, claim actual C99 compliance, let alone that being the case for the majority of them, and the amendments to C90 are not particularly relevant to embedded computing, I honestly fail to see what your quarrel with K&R2 might be. It teaches C, the _language_, and it does it well.

As a textbook to learn the language from? You must be kidding.

Chris Hills wrote in news:TdlmkHBu5ou $ snipped-for-privacy@phaedsys.demon.co.uk:

You sure you looked at the second edition there?

As previously said, I do recommend assembly language first. However, I recommend it regardless of whether the engineer will be working on

Not to quibble, but my recollection has a copy of K&R in my hands before 1985, probably 1982-3, and I don't think it was new then. K&R were doing their stuff on PDP-11s that I saw running up in Maynard, MA, in '73-4, but I was doing OEM support of 12-bit machines and have no idea how far along they were at that point.

Note to the OP: Seems like you've hit on a "religious" issue. Who'da thunk it?

Regards, Ken Asbury

standards

no kidding.

-bryan

Of course not. That would have been K&R1, then: the now thoroughly outdated first edition of the book which came out in 1978, and is thus

The "other" one I was referring to is K&R2, the second edition covering ANSI C, which hit the shelves in 1988. That's slightly earlier than the ANSI C Standard was actually issued (1989), but the book still matches the standard (and also C90, it's ISO re-issue).

But _which_ embedded systems? There are tons of embedded systems work that use 32-bit CPUs with console access trivially available, and plenty with 8-bit CPUs.

But it's not 25 years out of date.

It's only 15 years out of date because that's when the new standard came out, but possibly as few as 10 years because that's when conforming compilers became the norm.