Expert C Programming

unique in a programming language standard. Members of the standardization committee have commented that it was meant to guide th ...

The original Appendix is only 40 pages, while this section of the standard is twice as long. Section 7: The C runtime library (8 ...

Software Dogma Standards Are Set in Concrete, Even the Mistakes Just because it's written down in an international standard does ...

the function declaration. Prototypes make it easy for a compiler to check function use with definition. The second category is ...

char strcpy(char , const char * ); Don't omit the parameter names. Although the compiler doesn't check these, they often conve ...

argument char s matches parameter const char p This is seen throughout all library string functions. So doesn't argument char ar ...

Does Section 6.3.16.1 also make a call with a char ** argument corresponding to a const char ** parameter legal? It does not. Th ...

A const can be used for data, like so: const int limit = 10; and it acts somewhat as in other languages. When you add pointers i ...

conversions" changed between ye olde originale K&R C and ANSI C. Thus, where Kernighan and Ritchie say something like: Secti ...

The unsigned preserving approach (K&R C) says that when an unsigned type mixes with an int or smaller signed type, the resul ...

} The defined variable TOTAL_ELEMENTS has type unsigned int (because the return type of sizeof is "unsigned"). The test is compa ...

because the former allows the base type of the array to change (from, say, int to char) without needing a change to the #define, ...

The "#pragma" command is specified in the ANSI standard to have an arbitrary implementation- defined effect. In the GNU C prepro ...

Why Language Features Matter—The Way the Fortran Bug Really Happened! The details of a programming language really matter. They ...

One way of analyzing the deficiencies in a programming language is to consider the flaws in three possible categories: things th ...

switch (expression){ case constant-expression: zero-or-more-statements default: zero-or-more-statements case constant-expression ...

compound statement could be reused to process the braces-enclosed part of a switch. So a declaration is naturally accepted, thou ...

Another problem is that any statements inside a switch can be labelled and jumped to, allowing control to be passed around arbit ...

case 2 case 3 case 4 default This is known as "fall through" and was intended to allow common end processing to be done, after s ...

Break? This is a replica of the code that caused a major disruption of AT&T phone service throughout the U.S. AT&T's net ...