C Programming: A Modern Approach, 2nd Edition 2nd Edition

I ordered K.N. King's ``C Programming: A Modern Approach (Second Edition)'' from Amazon for my recent birthday. Having had more birthdays than I care to admit, this gift to myself is right up there with a Lionel train set I got for my eighth birthday (not from Amazon, of course -- it didn't exist that long ago but passengers trains sure did :)).In this second edition, I think that KNK is now the logical heir to K&R. That's not meant as blasphemy -- Kernighan and Ritchie's still great volume is around 20 years of age and it's unlikely they'll be getting together for K&R3. The C language has undergone enough changes (with the amendment of 1994) and C99, that a ``Modern Approach'' really is needed.There's another author familiar to readers of the comp.lang.c newsgroup for his approachable, engaging writing style. That author is a wonderful writer but doesn't let the truth get in the way of good narrative. King, though, is an equally engaging writer but is obviously passionate about correctness and adhering to the C standard. He's also meticulous about portability so that the examples are written in pure C and not some platform-specific variant.I've the entire book and can find hardly anything even nitpick. Aside from a minor style difference about using parentheses with the ``sizeof'' operator, which King explains his rationale for doing so, that's about it.His explanation of C99 (and the differences from C90 are clearly indicated) made me aware of some really nice features of the current standard for the language (and makes me wonder why one very notable compiler implementer hasn't yet supported C99).In short, get this book. The Q&A sections at the end of each chapter are very well done. The exercises and programming projects help to amplify the material presented. And King's examples will teach you more about barcodes and ISBN numbers than you ever thought possible.If you can appreciate the work of a fine craftsman in film such as Martin Scorsese, you'll find that King is of that caliber in the realm of lucidly dealing with this technical subject.

I am a first-year comp sci student (although I have a degree in an unrelated field) who was due to start an algorithm/problem solving class that would be focused on C. Although the class had no assigned textbook, I figured if I'm going to be using C, I'd better learn what I'm doing. I had tried previously to learn C with K&R, but I didn't make much progress. Too many of the programming practice problems given in K&R were frankly just too difficult for a beginner who is self-teaching. I decided to pick up another textbook. After extensive research, King's book seemed to be one of the most consistently and highly recommended.I started working through King's book a couple weeks before the class started to try and keep ahead of the class material. I can't say enough good things about this textbook. It is thorough but clear, and includes plenty of code examples to learn from. The programming exercises are just challenging enough to push you a bit beyond your comfort zone without feeling impossible, and there are many interesting problems to pick and choose from. There's enough material so that you can find many common standard library functions or core C concepts referenced over and over throughout the book. This really helps to see how the guts of C work in different contexts. The writing style is pleasant. King manages to keep what most would consider a very dry subject entertaining and fun, without losing any of the rigor you'd expect from a textbook. That's quite an achievement.Thanks partially to this book I finished the class with a perfect 100% score.

I feel like I got a great deal with this. Thank you, Neil! Thank you, -Value Enterprises!

I am a novice C programmer. I've taken half a dozen courses on different languages. I've taken several courses on C. This book has great content and covers the right topics. The exercises are mostly understandable but, some I couldn't figure out what the problem was looking for. About 1/3 of the answers to the exercises are available at the provided URL at the beginning of the book. The answers to programming projects however are not available. To make matters worse, the projects ask that you modify programs that you don't have access to. To complete the problem, you have to retype in several pages of code. This is nuts! I emailed the author and he didn't reply for the rest of the answers. Lastly, whatever ink they used to print the book smells which is a bit distracting when reading it for hours. Overall, glad I purchased this book because I'm learning.