Armed with Ora and K&R -- n00b to C

[Peter Ong]

Hello,

I'm very new to C. I have followed some of the earlier programs in the K&R
book, but I am still far from even being a novice. For a long time I was
looking for a little support group that I could come to for some guidance,
it seems with this newsgroup I have found that. I've known usenet was the
way to go, but when I started on my quest to learn C, I lost my high-speed
internet connection. The only internet connection I had was the limited one
my company gives me so I can connect through VPN, but I've got the DSL back
now -- just no static IP. But that will come in time.

I'm jumping back and forth between K&R and the Ora book because I find that
some concepts are better explained by the other. It helps to have two
different teachers. I need to learn C because I'm an avid UNIX user, but
don't know how to read source code. The most I can do is bash scripting
which in itself is quite powerful.

The company to which I am employed is a Windows shop. I've written many
bash scripts from my lowly BSD system under my desk that automates many of
my tedious tasks, but they don't like it because no one understands the
scripts, and they say that UNIX is outside of the standard. I will let go
of UNIX from work as much as I can, but the fact is there are things that
need to be scripted still, and how else am I to do this, with DOS Batch? I
discovered VBScript. This has been a challenge to learn as it is my first
exposure to OOP. But I've got the hang of it now.

It seems that my natural progression as a maturing systems administrator is
to learn to program as I realize I want to spend more time outside of work
and at the same time reducing human error; or even simply I want to spend
less time working be it in the office or not. Hehehe

Also, it seems that once you know one language you pretty much know all of
them. I was a PERL programmer for a while, but even that requires an engine
to be installed in Windows... a no no to high command.

So to conclude and get back on track, I'm so glad to have found this
newsgroup!!! I look forward to learning from you guys and I hope to be able
to contribute something back too.

P

 

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Hello,

I'm very new to C. (snip)

I'm jumping back and forth between K&R and the Ora book because I find that
some concepts are better explained by the other. It helps to have two
different teachers. I need to learn C because I'm an avid UNIX user, but
don't know how to read source code. The most I can do is bash scripting
which in itself is quite powerful.

Well, sometime most than C !-)
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ten-thousand.html

The company to which I am employed is a Windows shop. I've written many
bash scripts from my lowly BSD system under my desk that automates many of
my tedious tasks, but they don't like it because no one understands the
scripts,

This is the usual show-stopper from incompetent morons managing more or
less competent programmers. I've already heard it too many times since I
started working as a programmer, and my career began just a few years ago.

and they say that UNIX is outside of the standard.

which standard ?

I will let go
of UNIX from work as much as I can, but the fact is there are things that
need to be scripted still, and how else am I to do this, with DOS Batch?

Good luck.

I
discovered VBScript. This has been a challenge to learn as it is my first
exposure to OOP. But I've got the hang of it now.

There are really good scripting languages that run on Windows. Python -
that have a pretty good support for COM - comes to mind.

It seems that my natural progression as a maturing systems administrator is
to learn to program as I realize I want to spend more time outside of work
and at the same time reducing human error; or even simply I want to spend
less time working be it in the office or not. Hehehe

Also, it seems that once you know one language you pretty much know all of
them. I was a PERL programmer for a while, but even that requires an engine
to be installed in Windows... a no no to high command.

How does your boss expect you to work if you can't use usual admin tools
? Bad Boss, change Boss !-)

So to conclude and get back on track, I'm so glad to have found this
newsgroup!!! I look forward to learning from you guys and I hope to be able
to contribute something back too.

Welcome...

Bruno

 

[Larry__Weiss]

... but the fact is there are things that
need to be scripted still, and how else am I to do this, with DOS Batch? I
discovered VBScript. This has been a challenge to learn as it is my first
exposure to OOP. But I've got the hang of it now.

These newsgroups are topical for scripting in Microsoft operating systems:
<-- probably the best one of the two

You may find it much easier to write scripts in the provided script
environments under Windows than to write a C program for each task.

- Larry Weiss

 

[LibraryUser]

These newsgroups are topical for scripting in Microsoft operating
systems:
<-- probably the best one of the two

You may find it much easier to write scripts in the provided script
environments under Windows than to write a C program for each task.

This is OT on c.l.c, and better suited to comp.programming (FUPs
set). For operation on windows I would suggest using the much
improved batch language (backward compatible) available under 4NT
or 4DOS command processors. They are available at jpsoft.com.
Another option is to install DJGPP and bash, which will give you
scripting largely compatible with most Unix/Linux systems. Some
appropriate newsgroups:

comp.os.msdos.4dos
comp.os.msdos.djgpp

 

[one2001boy]

These newsgroups are topical for scripting in Microsoft operating systems:
<-- probably the best one of the two

You may find it much easier to write scripts in the provided script
environments under Windows than to write a C program for each task.

How about Ch shell? a C/C++ interpreter with extended shell
capability. It supports C90 and major C99 features. I think write C program for
scripting is kinda of easy with it.

http://www.softintegration.com/docs/ch/shell/

It is free to download and runs across platform.

 

[Larry__Weiss]

How about Ch shell? a C/C++ interpreter with extended shell
capability. It supports C90 and major C99 features. I think write C program for
scripting is kinda of easy with it.
http://www.softintegration.com/docs/ch/shell/
It is free to download and runs across platform.

I dl'ed it just after you posted it, but have not found the time to install
and try it out. I'll try hard this next week to give it attention.
Thanks for the pointer.

- Larry Weiss