C Pocket Reference Author: Peter Prinz & Ulla Kirch-Prinz. Translated by Tony Crawford. Pages: 134 Publisher: O'Reilly ISBN: 0-596-00436-2 Summary: A clearly written quick reference for the C language. Review Date: 28 July, 2004

While I was at BYU working on my computer science degree, I wrote a fair amount of code in C, and as a result ended up looking for a nice C reference I could turn to as occasion required. I found the C/C++ Programmer's Reference published by Osborne to be very helpful. However, had O'Reilly's C Pocket Reference been available at the time I may have gone that route, as its form factor and weight would have been more conducive to lugging around in a backpack.

So what's in the C Pocket Reference? Well, go to any bookstore and pull down one of those 1000-page monster C references, you know the ones I mean. Strip out all the superflous commentary, all the extended examples, all the stuff on C++ (most references seem to bundle the two). Strip it down to the core language information, a concise reference to all the functions in the standard library (don't forget to cover ANSI C99), write the resulting product in German, and then translate it to beautifully clear and precise English, and you'll have the basics of O'Reilly's C Pocket Reference. Add a nice index to boot. The book's table of contents offers a good picture of the broad range of the book.

This book would be great for anyone learning to program in C, and particularly good for experienced programmers who know C, but don't necessarily use it on a daily basis. Advanced C programmers can probably cite K & R from heart, but they might find the book useful to remind them the changes introduced with ANSI C99.

Overall the book really is a little gem of a reference, and I'd readily recommend it to anyone looking to get a better handle on C.

On the other hand, if you're looking for C++, perhaps O'Reilly's C++ Pocket Reference might be of interest.

Overall Rating: 8/10