ACCU Reviews: Your First C/C++ Program

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Book Review

Your First C/C++ Program by Alan R Neibauer
Not Recommended

ISBN: 0-7821-1414-8 Publisher: Sybex Pages: 367pp & disk Price: £22-99

Categories: beginner's c

Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 7-3 (Mar 1995)

This book includes C++ in the title, it also states that it is providing a free C compiler on a disk. The compiler provided is the shareware PCC compiler. Note that, as shareware, it is not free, you are required to register it after a 30 day trial period (some may also have problems reading it as it comes on a 5.25" disk. Of course those that know the product will know that PCC is rather far from being an ANSI compliant compiler and certainly has nothing to do with C++. As the author's understanding of C leaves a lot to be desired, for example, consider:

 main() {
	char name[15];
 	gets(name);
	puts(name);
 }

from page 97. He then declares 'The gets() command will assign up to the first 14 characters typed on the keyboard to the string variable called name.' I think you can see that the erroneous title and free offer on the cover are only a small part of the problems with this book.

The author likes to give marginal 'tips' and 'notes' so let me provide one of each.

Note: C++ is not a superset of C. Tip: Do not buy this book, buy a good text and something like Turbo C++.

Comment:
Yechiel Kimchi (yechiel__at__cs.Technion.AC.IL) has written an additional review: http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/yechiel/CS/BadBooksC+C++.html#Neibauer

Last Update - 13 May 2001.

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