Shaw Z.A. Learn C the Hard Way: Practical Exercises on the Computational Subjects You Keep Avoiding (Like C)

Addison-Wesley Professional, 2015. — 384 p. — (Zed Shaw's Hard Way Series). — ISBN10: 0-321-88492-2, ISBN13: 978-0-321-88492-3.Zed Shaw has crafted the perfect course for the beginning C programmer eager to advance their skills in any language. Follow it and you will learn the many skills early and junior programmers need to succeed. You bring discipline, commitment, persistence, and experience with any programming language; the author supplies everything else.In Learn C the Hard Way , you’ll learn C by working through 52 brilliantly crafted exercises. Read Zed Shaw’s teaching exercises, type his code precisely, fix your mistakes, watch the programs run. As you do, you’ll learn what good, modern C programs look like; how to think more effectively about code; and how to find and fix mistakes far more efficiently. Most importantly, you’ll master rigorous defensive programming techniques, so you can use any language to create software that protects itself from malicious activity and defects.Through practical projects you’ll apply what you learn to build confidence in your new skills. Shaw teaches the key skills you need to start writing excellent C software, including:
Setting up a C environment;
Basic syntax and idioms;
Compilation, make files, and linkers;
Operators, variables, and data types;
Program control;
Arrays and strings;
Functions, pointers, and structs;
Memory allocation;
I/O and files;
Libraries;
Data structures, including linked lists, sort, and search;
Stacks and queues;
Debugging, defensive coding, and automated testing;
Fixing stack overflows, illegal memory access, and more;
Breaking and hacking your own C code.This tutorial will reward you for every minute you put into it. Soon, you’ll know one of the world’s most powerful programming languages. You’ll be a C programmer.Introduction. The Cartesian Dream of C
The Setup
Dust Off That Compiler
Make Is Your Python Now
Formatted Printing
Introducing Valgrind
The Structure Of A C Program
Types Of Variables
More Variables, Some Math
Sizes And Arrays
Arrays And Strings
Arrays Of Strings, Looping
While-Loop And Boolean Expressions
If, Else-If, Else
Switch Statement
Writing And Using Functions
Pointers Dreaded Pointers
Structs And Pointers To Them
Heap And Stack Memory Allocation
Pointers To Functions
A Simple Object System
Zed's Awesome Debug Macros
Advanced Data Types And Flow Control
The Stack, Scope, And Globals
Meet Duff's Device
Input, Output, Files
Variable Argument Functions
Write A First Real Program
Creative And Defensive Programming
Intermediate Makefiles
Libraries And Linking
Automated Testing
Debugging Code
Double Linked Lists
Linked List Algorithms
Dynamic Array
Sorting And Searching
Safer Strings
Hashmaps
Hashmap Algorithms
String Algorithms
Binary Search Trees
Using Cachegrind And Callgrind For Performance Tuning
Stacks and Queues
A Simple Statistics Engine
Ring Buffer
A Simple TCP/IP Client
Ternary Search Tree
A Fast URL Router
A Tiny Virtual Machine
Next Steps
Deconstructing K&R C