Learning to program in C

[Iman74]

At UOP I am taking a class that we are learning to program in C and I learned a lot already. Taking a simple assignment by using printf to display a message, we took that and went further. But I also learned reading about C and all it's functions, and this and that is almost impossible for I can't stay awake. However, if I am behind the keyboard working on a program, I am so excited sleep is not an option. So I am not going to bother reading anymore for it's just too boring, but doing is where all the fun and learning takes place. Which brings me to my question.
The books I am assigned are in electronic format, and personally I prefer to read off of hardcopy, not to mention I want a book so I can locate the page and just flip to it. Any books in particular are considered the best.

What I am looking for is a reference manual, not a book that is written to be read cover to cover. Lastly, I want to use it as a tool to find terms, functions, variables, etc to use to get the desired result. For instance in our simple program we wanted to make it so someone had to press any key to close the window: well with Google I was able to find that, however I want a book.

Suggestions???

[AerynSedai]

one of the definitive reference books out there is the Kernighan and Ritchie "C Programming Language". it is intended for system level C programming, and it gets down into the nitty gritty details of C, and assumes you already know some things. still, it makes a good reference. many programmers i know have a thoroughly marked up copy.

another definitive author is W. Richard Stevens. he wrote many excellent books on unix and the C language. i am sure you could use them as a reference, but they are more manual-esque. again, they get very deep, too.

the next best reference is the man pages or rtfm (you have to find out what rtfm means by yourself). "man" is a nix command which tells you everything you would ever want to know about anything, like standard C library functions. or other nix commands. these can also be found on the internet. ie. search for "man printf". it takes time and skill to read these and get anything useful out of them, though.

personally, i would check out amazon.com and see what people are buying there and what the reviews are. while you cannot beat K&R and Stevens for completeness, there is probably a better beginners reference out there.

AS

[akshat]

Hi

Try to get your hands on this particular book:

"Teach Yourself C in 21 days"

from

Publisher "Techmedia

ISBN no. 81-7635-369-8

web site: http://www.bpbonline.com

or
BlackWell.com

or

http://www.firstandsecond.com

[Colonel Sanders]

Look on www.howstuffworks.com- has some great lessons on C.(even easy enough for me to understand )

L J