The Standard C Library

by P.J. Plauger

This work offers a comprehensive treatment of ANSI and ISO standards for the C library. The code in the book is compatible with C compilers from Borland, Saber, Sun UNIX and VAX UNIX.

It focuses on the concepts, design issues and trade-offs associated with library building - programmers will be able to make the best use of the C library and will be less likely to recode something that already exists in a given program. Also included is practical advice on using and implementing all 15 headers of the C library, with one chapter devoted to each section of the library, and coverage of internationalization and the writing of locale-independent programs (topics with which the most experienced C programmers are often not familiar).

Genres: Programming, Computers, Computer Science, Technical, Reference, Software

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1991

About the author

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._Pl...

Phillip James Plauger is an author and entrepreneur. He has written and co-written articles and books about programming style, software tools, the C programming language, and science fiction short stories.

Reviews

[Nick Black · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readers of comp.lang.c will be familiar with Plauger, a ubiquitous face on various ANSI/ISO standardization committees. He's put together a detailed tour of the C standard library, useful to users thereof but especially implementors. Thorough coverage of stdio is appreciated, while rather cursory treatment of the math elements is regrettable -- then again, very few people, I'm-serious-to-God-here, *very* few people -- ought be writing mathematical core code, especially in this age of appalling mathematical illiteracy among programmers. Unfortunately, ISO C99 is not (in the most recent edition I know of) covered: C90 is the basis of discussion (no such book, to the best of my knowledge, addresses C99, but the groin-grabbingly sweet C Interfaces and Implementations uses it throughout).

The printing is disgustingly ugly, to boot.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

After the C "BIBLE" (K&R book), this is the next best book to get if you find yourself doing C programming. Though C may be a bit out of date these days, if you find yourself in its boundary for anything, then this book is an excellent resource.

Why would C be used still? Probably most likely on low memory embedded systems. This book explains and gives implementation for the entire standard C library. So if you can't afford to package the whole standard C library in your embedded system, you can use this book's implementations to help you code your own versions of the functions you need.

This book was a big time saver when I was working with embedded systems programming.

[James Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't think of a better way to get more acquainted with the C standard library and all of its quirks and pitfalls than by reading this book. It's basically an annotated implementation, and spends a lot of time discussing the C standard and why things are the way they are.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buy a copy of Hacker's Delight if you are implementing a C runtime library.