Clan x86

Technical (Development, Security, etc.) => General Programming => Topic started by: deadly7 on January 23, 2011, 10:10:11 pm

Title: Brief refresher on C?
Post by: deadly7 on January 23, 2011, 10:10:11 pm
Google sucks at knowing that I want C and not CPP. Anyway, it's been a while since I've programed in C. Does anyone have a good small refresher in programming C? Preferrably online, not a paper book.
Title: Re: Brief refresher on C?
Post by: Joe on January 23, 2011, 11:47:54 pm
The best refresher on C is to go code something. I looked in my C folder (I have a programming folder, with a folder for each language I play with) and I have nothing of value there, so I did a quick Googling. this (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Programming/Beginning_exercises) looks like a good crash course, and here's (http://publications.gbdirect.co.uk/c_book/) a book, although I haven't really looked at it.
Title: Re: Brief refresher on C?
Post by: Ender on January 25, 2011, 09:10:30 pm
The K&R (1) book is the classic textbook, and it's also good as reference material. There's also the man pages. It's useful to poke around /usr/include and /usr/lib if you're on Unix, and it's also useful to refresh yourself on libc (2).

There's a ##C channel on freenode which is good for language-specific questions. Don't be scared off by the newbies - the people who answer questions usually know C pretty well.

I also wrote a packet sniffer and an IRC client in C. I uploaded them to sidoh's server. (3)

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language_%28book%29
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_standard_library
(3) http://ktm.sidoh.org/code/

Nota Bene: In addition, I'd strongly recommend familiarizing yourself with gdb and assembly. Also: linking, loading, and dynamic libraries. And, of course, memory management, if you're not familiar with it already.
Title: Re: Brief refresher on C?
Post by: nslay on January 27, 2011, 12:00:00 am
The IRC C and UNIX crowds are almost certainly the wrong people to ask. These people won't help you with a refresher, they just want to be around each other, share links, and idle. Anyone who asks newbie-like questions will be severely punished.

The best place to look for help are programmer forums. This forum and rohitab are great programming forums.
Title: Re: Brief refresher on C?
Post by: Joe on January 28, 2011, 03:01:31 pm
How did I forget stackoverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/)?
Title: Re: Brief refresher on C?
Post by: Sidoh on January 28, 2011, 03:14:19 pm
I think the best way is to jump in headfirst.  Think of some project that sounds fun to you and go for it.

A sudoku solver is a pretty nice choice because it's somewhat simple, but still requires good use of some data structures and algorithms.