Book review (brief)

From           ok@cs.otago.ac.nz (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization   Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Date           20 Sep 1996 09:13:22 -0500
Newsgroups     comp.lang.c.moderated
Message-ID     <51u8q2$3rn@solutions.solon.com>

This week I received a copy of a new book abouit C programming.
It is suitable for people who have had at least one semester of
instruction in C.

	C Interfaces and Implementations
	Techniques for Creating Reusable Software
	David R. Hanson
	Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series
	ISBN 0-201-49841-3

There are a number of small slips, like spelling "disseminate" as
"disemminate" on the first page of the Preface and spelling "incidentally"
as "incidently" on p193.

There are a lot of things I wouldn't do that way.
A number of things (like external identifiers that are not distinct
in the first 6 letters) are non-standard.
Quite a lot of things are perfectly splendid C, but will choke a C++
compiler. (You thought C++ was a superset of C? You were wrong.)
But it's a book about C, not C++.

However, if more C programmers read, understood, and imitated this book,
the world would be a better and safer place. If you liked "Code Complete",
you'll probably like this book.

David Hanson and Christopher Fraser wrote "A Retargetable C Compiler:
Design and Implementation", which describes lcc, a compiler I am very
pleased to have. David Hanson is a very good programmer, and most of
us will learn something useful from this book.
-- 
Australian citizen since 14 August 1996.  *Now* I can vote the xxxs out!
Richard A. O'Keefe; U. Otago Comp.Sci.