A Tutorial On Pointers And Arrays In C

by Ted Jensen

This document is intended to introduce pointers to beginning programmers in the C programming language. Over several years of reading and contributing to various conferences on C including those on the FidoNet and UseNet, I have noted a large number of newcomers to C appear to have a difficult time in grasping the fundamentals of pointers. I therefore undertook the task of trying to explain them in plain language with lots of examples.

53 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I did not learn much that I did not already know about pointers before I started reading this, it is obvious that hard-won knowledge would have been much more easily acquired if I had known about this tutorial a lot sooner. It doesn't quite achieve what I really want out of a proper treatment of C and pointers, but no other book or academic course I have ever encountered does, either. They all skimp on some areas with regard to pointers, often in more than one way, but this public domain PDF did a very thorough job of addressing the matters it set out to explain and, in so doing, surely helped make better C programmers out of many people.

The true five-star pure-ish C book still does not exist, but this is the closest I've gotten to finding it, and until something better comes along this is likely to be my new most-recommended book on C programming, to be suggested every time someone asks about C in general or C pointers in particular. The author, Ted Jensen, did the world of C programming a great favor when he released this into the public domain on the Internet.

Whatever C book you read first, make this your second.