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A Book on C 4ed by Al Kelley & Ira Pohl Recommended

ISBN: 0 201 18399 4       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 724pp       Price: £27-95

Categories:   advanced c

Reviewed by Sean Reynolds in C Vu 12-2 (Mar 2000)

Good use of example code is made throughout with some interesting algorithms and projects. For example, the section on recursion uses 'The Towers of Hanoi' problem, concurrent processes is exemplified through 'The Dining Philosophers' and you get to play 'Paper, Rock, Scissors' when dealing with bitwise operators and enumeration types. Each chapter concludes with an extensive set of exercises, making the book a useful study text. The final two chapters are a welcome inclusion, guiding the reader through C to C++ and C to Java migration respectively, with a good primer on OOP. The appendices provide useful references of the standard library, language syntax and ANSI v Traditional C.

The text is peppered with good illustrative code, but the overall book design and format is perhaps a little bland. However, this is more than compensated for by the content.

I like this book; you are given a thorough grounding in ANSI C within a single and not too weighty, volume.

Pohl
Book on C (3rd ed), A by Kelley & Pohl  (Reviewed Jan 1996)
C++ For C Programmers by Ira Pohl [Highly Recommended]  (Reviewed Mar 1991)
C++ for C Programmers 3rd ed by Ira Pohl [Not Recommended]  (Reviewed May 1999)
C++ for Pascal Programmers (2nd ed) by Ira Pohl  (Reviewed Nov 1995)
Object-Oriented Programming Using C++ (2ed) by Ira Pohl [Not Recommended]  (Reviewed May 1997)
Object-Oriented Programming Using C++ by Ira Pohl  (Reviewed Jul 1993)