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Title: C Wizard's Programming Reference
Author: Martin Moene
Date: 28 June 2010 08:47:00 +01:00 or Mon, 28 June 2010 08:47:00 +01:00
Summary: Review By Phil Stubbington
Body:
I am always a little wary of any computer book which seems to be trying to boost the ego of the potential purchaser; I'm sure you know the sort of thing - "The Advanced Programmers' Guide To....". The Wizard's Reference fortunately doesn't fit into this category, being a highly readable and usable C reference.
In his dedication, Mr. Schwaderer mentions that this book was "only supposed to be a reference card". The book now runs to over 200 pages, spiral-bound (as ALL reference books should be!), with sections devoted to a C language overview, C operators, preprocessor and statement reference, standard and non-standard library file I/O and a number of appendices.
The book has been designed as a quick-reference guide, with white-on-black frames used to make particular areas stand out as you flip through. Each area,then has a discussion of the subject, use, examples, format, comments, and reference, followed (often) by a list of the hazards. For example, the discussion of the "char" type, explains why you should declare variables which may contain EOF as an "int".
From the blurb on the back of the back, it is obvious that one of the aims is to help create portable programs. Throughout the book, references are made to the draft ANSI X3J11 standard and potential portability problems (such as the EOF problem mentioned above) are pointed out.
Mr. Schwaderer has a very readable writing style, and extensive use of diagrams (to show the format of structure declarations, for example) actually adds something to the book, rather than just being space fillers. As a pleasant change, the book also has a good index, so if you can't spot what you are looking for from just flicking through, the index usually helps.
The Wizard's guide is well worth a look by any reasonably proficient C programmer, and is probably a useful backup to a tutorial guide for newcomers to the language. Incidentally, a similar style has been adopted for other books from Wiley - including a reference for Prolog and Modula-2 (I think)
Notes:
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