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The authors give a thorough and accessible treatment of C programming; the book is a hybrid of an Introductory C text and an ANSI C reference. The book is not aimed at the newcomer, but is far more suited to those taking a second course in programming. Although, the opening chapters begin with the obligatory 'hello world!' type examples, the reader will be on a steep learning curve thereafter, covering practically every aspect of the C language in more than a little depth.

Good use of example code is made throughout with some interesting algorithms and projects. For example, the section on recursion uses 'The Towers of Hanoi' problem, concurrent processes is exemplified through 'The Dining Philosophers' and you get to play 'Paper, Rock, Scissors' when dealing with bitwise operators and enumeration types. Each chapter concludes with an extensive set of exercises, making the book a useful study text. The final two chapters are a welcome inclusion, guiding the reader through C to C++ and C to Java migration respectively, with a good primer on OOP. The appendices provide useful references of the standard library, language syntax and ANSI v Traditional C.

The text is peppered with good illustrative code, but the overall book design and format is perhaps a little bland. However, this is more than compensated for by the content.

I like this book; you are given a thorough grounding in ANSI C within a single and not too weighty, volume.