Mastering C Pointers: Tools for Programming Power/Book With Disk

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Summary: This book is a good resource for novice C programmers
Review: As a novice C programmer I found Robert Traisters book Mastering C Pointers useful for demystifying the use of C pointers. Especially valuable were the examples showing the importance of coding style and the use of spaces for making C code comprehensible. His comment towards the end about the importance of commenting code and using good structure was priceless. It goes something like this (I will paraphrase). Frequently it is stated that comments and good coding structure are essential to assist the programmer who comes along in a few months and gets stuck maintaining a piece of code. With C programming comments and good coding structure are essential ... so the progammer can understand his own code after coming back from coffee ... It is so true!

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Summary: Book Presents an Excellent Review of C Pointers
Review: The material which this book presents on C pointers must, I repeat, MUST, be thoroughly mastered and understood before a beginning C programmer can become a serious professional. This book will provide that mastery. If every piece of C code which I have seen had been programmed by someone who had thoroughly and completely understood how to use C pointers, then the vast majority, if not all, of the memory leaks and other memory related problems in those programs would never have seen the light of day. Particularly useful is the discussion about uninitialized versus initialized pointers, pointer indirection, and addresses (constant pointers). The book is best summed up by a single sentence on page 77: "Always know where and to what your pointers point." Although this book lacks the glitz and polish of other comparable books on C, it is clearly a must read. As a C programming professional, I highly recommend this book.

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Summary: arrogant writing style and incorrect information.
Review: The writing style talks down to the reader. The book focuses on the MS/DOS architecture. Why isn't it titled as such? I stopped reading after the author commented that many programmers are afraid to use functions that return pointers. He then went on to give an example of how to use them. It was wrong! Reference page 111 of the SECOND EDITION. The "combine()" function returns a pointer to a local variable which is out of scope when it is dereferenced. I would have returned the book but unfortunately it came with a disk which I had prematurely ripped out! I doubt ant AP books will be finding a space on my bookshelf.