K&R is often recommended, and it's certainly fun to read and accessible. But I've also heard it's outdated, and doesn't rally focus much on modern C software design, mostly because the world knew little about it when K&R was written.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Or maybe it's better to say -- sanity checking on inputs is an (unmentioned) exercise left to the reader.
It won't cover C99, C11, or modern practices to mitigate buffer overflows. But it is still an excellent introduction to the fundamentals of C. It's also aimed at people who already know how to program in, say, Pascal, so is probably best not approached as a rank beginner.
The exercises in K&R are superb though and I highly recommend taking the time to do them all while you read K&R which I still feel you should, it is a small book so shouldn't take long to read.
well, there is a 'ModernC' book by Jens Gustedt of INRIA available here: http://icube-icps.unistra.fr/img_auth.php/d/db/ModernC.pdf
which might suit your fancy ?
Artificial example:
for( int i = 0 ; i < c+j ; i += b )
for( int count = 0 ; count < sum+extra ; count += skip )
I don't understand why 'i' has been given a pass. The argument boils down to saved keystrokes. Typing is not the bottleneck.
I have been using index instead of i in while loops lately. It's surprisingly concise.
But apart from that, I think using i,j,k as index variables in for-loop has become such a de-facto standard that I would only prefer long names such as "count" or "index" in situations where multiple indices may cause confusion. But then I'd probably use even more specific names than "count" or "index".
The reason is that in FORTRAN variables starting with i, j, k..n were defined as integers.
Back in the day I learned fortran first, then basic. People that learned basic first often would use the letter 'a' as a loop index instead of 'i'
Now days I still use 'i' but often use indx instead because my editor doesn't highlight single letter variables easily.
Because it is well enough established (in both programming and mathematics) that it communicates literally no less information to the reader than "iterator" or "index" would in the same context.
> The argument boils down to saved keystrokes.
Not at all. I, for one, find it easier to see the shape of the whole expression when the variable names are shorter.
all single letters = bad, java style thisIsALoopCounter = bad.
and in the c world i is almost universally understood to be used as a loop counter and index. If I came across 'count' in a c code I (briefly) might think it was related to a count of items in an array or similar.
https://github.com/jsoftware/jsource/blob/master/jsrc/cip.c
...just one of the many source files that make the interpreter for the J language.
Brilliant!
I doubt that this is either serious (unobfuscated) or handwritten code though.