Practical C Programming

Steve Oualline lives in Southern California, where he works as a software engineer for a major phone company. In his free time he is a real engineer on the Poway Midland Railroad. Steve has written almost a dozen books on programming and Linux software. His web site is oualline.com .

There are lots of introductory C books, but this is the first one that has the no-nonsense, practical approach that has made Nutshell Handbooks

Preface; How This Book is Organized;
Chapter by Chapter;
Notes on the Third Edition;
Font Conventions;
Obtaining Source Code;
Comments and Questions;
Acknowledgments;
Acknowledgments to the Third Edition;
Basics;
Chapter 1: What Is C?;
1.1 How Programming Works;
1.2 Brief History of C;
1.3 How C Works;
1.4 How to Learn C;
Chapter 2: Basics of Program Writing;
2.1 Programs from Conception to Execution;
2.2 Creating a Real Program;
2.3 Creating a Program Using a Command-Line Compiler;
2.4 Creating a Program Using an Integrated Development Environment;
2.5 Getting Help on UNIX;
2.6 Getting Help in an Integrated Development Environment;
2.7 IDE Cookbooks;
2.8 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 3: Style;
3.1 Common Coding Practices;
3.2 Coding Religion;
3.3 Indentation and Code Format;
3.4 Clarity;
3.5 Simplicity;
3.6 Summary;
Chapter 4: Basic Declarations and Expressions;
4.1 Elements of a Program;
4.2 Basic Program Structure;
4.3 Simple Expressions;
4.4 Variables and Storage;
4.5 Variable Declarations;
4.6 Integers;
4.7 Assignment Statements;
4.8 printf Function;
4.9 Floating Point;
4.10 Floating Point Versus Integer Divide;
4.11 Characters;
4.12 Answers;
4.13 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 5: Arrays, Qualifiers, and Reading Numbers;
5.1 Arrays;
5.2 Strings;
5.3 Reading Strings;
5.4 Multidimensional Arrays;
5.5 Reading Numbers;
5.6 Initializing Variables;
5.7 Types of Integers;
5.8 Types of Floats;
5.9 Constant Declarations;
5.10 Hexadecimal and Octal Constants;
5.11 Operators for Performing Shortcuts;
5.12 Side Effects;
5.13 ++x or x++;
5.14 More Side-Effect Problems;
5.15 Answers;
5.16 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 6: Decision and Control Statements;
6.1 if Statement;
6.2 else Statement;
6.3 How Not to Use strcmp;
6.4 Looping Statements;
6.5 while Statement;
6.6 break Statement;
6.7 continue Statement;
6.8 Assignment Anywhere Side Effect;
6.9 Answer;
6.10 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 7: Programming Process;
7.1 Setting Up;
7.2 Specification;
7.3 Code Design;
7.4 Prototype;
7.5 Makefile;
7.6 Testing;
7.7 Debugging;
7.8 Maintenance;
7.9 Revisions;
7.10 Electronic Archaeology;
7.11 Marking Up the Program;
7.12 Using the Debugger;
7.13 Text Editor as a Browser;
7.14 Add Comments;
7.15 Programming Exercises;
Simple Programming;
Chapter 8: More Control Statements;
8.1 for Statement;
8.2 switch Statement;
8.3 switch, break, and continue;
8.4 Answers;
8.5 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 9: Variable Scope and Functions;
9.1 Scope and Class;
9.2 Functions;
9.3 Functions with No Parameters;
9.4 Structured Programming;
9.5 Recursion;
9.6 Answers;
9.7 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 10: C Preprocessor;
10.1 #define Statement;
10.2 Conditional Compilation;
10.3 include Files;
10.4 Parameterized Macros;
10.5 Advanced Features;
10.6 Summary;
10.7 Answers;
10.8 Programming Exercises;
Chapter 11: Bit Operations;
11.1 Bit Operators;
11.2 The and Operator (&);
11.3 Bitwise or (|);
11.4 The Bitwise Exclusive or (^);
11.5 The Ones Complement Operator (Not) (~);
11.6 The Left- and Right-Shift Operators (