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Organization
The C/Unix Programmer's Guide is organized as a progressive tutorial
for those who are new to programming. Each chapter is clearly marked
with a Before you begin box stating what you need to know
before reading the chapter. No knowledge of computers or programming
is assumed. Beginning readers need only basic algebra skills to
proceed. If you already have some experience, you can probably skip
the first few chapters, but you may wish to read them anyway.
In this case, they'll be easy reading, and you'll undoubtedly get
something out of it!
While the book is organized as a tutorial, subjects are also carefully
separated and indexed so that it will serve as a valuable reference.
Unlike some texts, which blend several loosely related subjects into
each chapter, The C/Unix Programmer's Guide is extensively outlined so
that you can quickly find what you need in the table of contents. It
also includes a 10-page index, for looking up those obscure subjects.
Examples
Examples are probably the most influential part of any textbook.
The visual nature of examples makes them one of the most powerful and
lasting impressions taken in by the reader. While the text is
important in laying out the concepts, it is the examples that bring the
knowledge together in a form that can be easily stored and retrieved by
the human mind.
One of the most important facts I discovered in my seven years of
teaching, was that students learn their programming style primarily
from the examples they copy and adapt from their text books. Teachers
are essentially powerless in preventing students from following bad
examples in print. Therefore, The C/Unix Programmer's Guide adheres
to very strict coding standards throughout the text, so that students
will be more likely to write maintainable code (which will make their
instructors happy, and earn them good grades). There are
no examples using global variables, gotos, or
inappropriate hard-coded constants. All
examples make extensive use of portable and modifiable constructs
provided in the header files, including type definitions such as
size_t, and manifest constants such as M_PI.
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