Need suggestions for C links.

[Guest]

List,

I'm looking for C links for Standard C for a website targeting
professional SW engineers. Intent is to have a convenient reference to
Standard C, particularly for those who come from backgrounds with a good
bit of specialized extensions.

I've plenty of Standards for my industry--a subset of embedded systems
work, but I need more good, "Standard, no extensions" links, as
increasingly in the embedded world standards dictate just that.

I already have:

--The c.l.c FAQ
--The c.l.c IFAQ
--http://www-ccs.ucsd.edu/c/ From what I've seen so far, this is a good
Standard reference, though I've not read it exhaustively.

I don't need "How to Program" nor "C Tutorial" links. Everyone reading
"knows C", but there's a wide variety of backgrounds coming into the
embedded world. Window? What's a window? Text? Those words are
strange to me....

Two things I need are an authoritative printf()-family reference.
Though it's often banned in production code, it's common in debugging,
along with "No Warnings Allowed", so it's important to get the details
right.

The other thing I consider a "Need" is an authoritative operator
precedence chart. There are a number around, and I'm not quite certain
whether any is better than copying K&Rs to a web table, apart from a
general dislike of coding HTML...

Aside from those two items, I'm after anything that can help a herd of
cats . .er . . . variety of C programmers from different backgrounds get
on the "Standard" page.

Thanx

 

[Keith Thompson]

I'm looking for C links for Standard C for a website targeting
professional SW engineers. Intent is to have a convenient reference to
Standard C, particularly for those who come from backgrounds with a good
bit of specialized extensions. [...]
I don't need "How to Program" nor "C Tutorial" links. Everyone reading
"knows C", but there's a wide variety of backgrounds coming into the
embedded world. Window? What's a window? Text? Those words are
strange to me....

Two things I need are an authoritative printf()-family reference.
Though it's often banned in production code, it's common in debugging,
along with "No Warnings Allowed", so it's important to get the details
right.

The other thing I consider a "Need" is an authoritative operator
precedence chart. There are a number around, and I'm not quite certain
whether any is better than copying K&Rs to a web table, apart from a
general dislike of coding HTML...

[...]

How about the standard itself?

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the
FAQ has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it),
which incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

That's assuming you want C99. I think you can also find drafts of the
C89/C90 standard; I'm not certain that the C90 standard itself is
still available.

 

[Jordan Abel]

I'm looking for C links for Standard C for a website targeting
professional SW engineers. Intent is to have a convenient reference to
Standard C, particularly for those who come from backgrounds with a good
bit of specialized extensions. [...]
I don't need "How to Program" nor "C Tutorial" links. Everyone reading
"knows C", but there's a wide variety of backgrounds coming into the
embedded world. Window? What's a window? Text? Those words are
strange to me....

Two things I need are an authoritative printf()-family reference.
Though it's often banned in production code, it's common in debugging,
along with "No Warnings Allowed", so it's important to get the details
right.

The other thing I consider a "Need" is an authoritative operator
precedence chart. There are a number around, and I'm not quite certain
whether any is better than copying K&Rs to a web table, apart from a
general dislike of coding HTML...

[...]

How about the standard itself?

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the
FAQ has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it),
which incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

That's assuming you want C99. I think you can also find drafts of the
C89/C90 standard; I'm not certain that the C90 standard itself is
still available.

The standard does not contain an operator precedence table.

 

[Keith Thompson]

The standard does not contain an operator precedence table.

True, but you can infer operator precedence from the grammar, and even
(I think) from the order of the subsections of section 6.5,
"Expressions".

 

[MrG{DRGN}]

-snip

How about the standard itself?

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the
FAQ has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it),
which incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

That's assuming you want C99. I think you can also find drafts of the
C89/C90 standard; I'm not certain that the C90 standard itself is
still available.

Why did they decide to use a *expletive deleted* PDF file? It may just be
my opinion, but I think that html file(s) would be much more easily
navigated. I suppose I could wrong, but I doubt it in this case.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

MrG{DRGN} said:

Why did they decide to use a *expletive deleted* PDF file? It may just be
my opinion, but I think that html file(s) would be much more easily
navigated. I suppose I could wrong, but I doubt it in this case.

It's because the ISO guys never really understood the concept of
portability. They think the name "Portable Document Format" indicates a
portable document format.

 

[Chris Hills]

I'm looking for C links for Standard C for a website targeting
professional SW engineers. Intent is to have a convenient reference to
Standard C, particularly for those who come from backgrounds with a good
bit of specialized extensions. [...]
I don't need "How to Program" nor "C Tutorial" links. Everyone reading
"knows C", but there's a wide variety of backgrounds coming into the
embedded world. Window? What's a window? Text? Those words are
strange to me....

Two things I need are an authoritative printf()-family reference.
Though it's often banned in production code, it's common in debugging,
along with "No Warnings Allowed", so it's important to get the details
right.

The other thing I consider a "Need" is an authoritative operator
precedence chart. There are a number around, and I'm not quite certain
whether any is better than copying K&Rs to a web table, apart from a
general dislike of coding HTML...

[...]

How about the standard itself?

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the
FAQ has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it),
which incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

That's assuming you want C99. I think you can also find drafts of the
C89/C90 standard; I'm not certain that the C90 standard itself is
still available.

It is but only in hard copy at around 30 GAP or 50 US.

 

[Chris Hills]

-snip

Why did they decide to use a *expletive deleted* PDF file? It may just be
my opinion, but I think that html file(s) would be much more easily
navigated. I suppose I could wrong, but I doubt it in this case.

As you can put links into PDF files that behave as links in html files.

I this context html is the same as PDF except you can't protect an html
file the same as a PDF.

 

[Chris Hills]

MrG{DRGN} said:


It's because the ISO guys never really understood the concept of
portability. They think the name "Portable Document Format" indicates a
portable document format.

IT is as portable and anything else. Probably more so.
HTML has all sorts of extensions.

Why is PDF not portable?

If it is not portable why is it universally used for documents that need
to be portable?

There is no way I would ship a document in html. For a start it is
editable.

 

[CBFalconer]

I'm looking for C links for Standard C for a website targeting
professional SW engineers. Intent is to have a convenient
reference to Standard C, particularly for those who come from
backgrounds with a good bit of specialized extensions.

I've plenty of Standards for my industry--a subset of embedded
systems work, but I need more good, "Standard, no extensions"
links, as increasingly in the embedded world standards dictate
just that.

I already have:

--The c.l.c FAQ
--The c.l.c IFAQ
--http://www-ccs.ucsd.edu/c/ From what I've seen so far, this
is a good Standard reference, though I've not read it
exhaustively.

I don't need "How to Program" nor "C Tutorial" links. Everyone
reading "knows C", but there's a wide variety of backgrounds
coming into the embedded world. Window? What's a window?
Text? Those words are strange to me....

Two things I need are an authoritative printf()-family reference.
Though it's often banned in production code, it's common in
debugging, along with "No Warnings Allowed", so it's important to
get the details right.

The other thing I consider a "Need" is an authoritative operator
precedence chart. There are a number around, and I'm not quite
certain whether any is better than copying K&Rs to a web table,
apart from a general dislike of coding HTML...

Aside from those two items, I'm after anything that can help a
herd of cats . .er . . . variety of C programmers from different
backgrounds get on the "Standard" page.

See the links in my sig. As far as precedence is concerned, the
standard does not spell out precedence, just BNF for parsing. The
best advice is not to assume any precedence whatsoever beyond
(multiplicative > additive > logical), but to use explicit
parentheses. This way both the writer and the reader will be sure
what is intended.

For my own benefit I maintain a copy of n869.txt with pagination
removed. This is suitable both for quoting and for rapid search
with text tools. A search for "functioname(" will usually yield an
immediate description of any standard function. A not found
immediately shows that such a function is non-standard (with one
exception). More detailed library discussion can be found on the
dinkumware page below.

--
Some useful references about C:
<http://www.ungerhu.com/jxh/clc.welcome.txt>
<http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html>
<http://benpfaff.org/writings/clc/off-topic.html>
<http://anubis.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n869/> (C99)
<http://www.dinkumware.com/refxc.html> (C-library}
<http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/> (GNU docs)
<http://clc-wiki.net> (C-info)

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Chris Hills said:

IT is as portable and anything else. Probably more so.
HTML has all sorts of extensions.

So does C. That doesn't mean C isn't portable. And HTML is editable in any
text editor.

Why is PDF not portable?

Here's an extract from my copy of C99:

ÁP;£^]~[ó$~Cj˽pk§y|
!ë^AElzõü«Ôî`I0Ï(~I~]öX~HLÖ^BrW&^O^M.~\±[/À¨òñm)sôg~L^F~H~CÀj^Vu0sO(³¬~^-ÀÝ|
&£~A~NJÞ~[é½Ð\øð}òÈmÙ"é~Yu@W2iPÎÙ«³Ùq¥^EDï-+\ä~H4ÊãÏw^KÖÁãíÃ^];Î~Dìå~R4`^@0oÊ00~H^Bo~IÅÏ~Bàg^^Böd¦^O8^Cìô^A^BJô;~WÐ沨°^HAä~I~Oß^D¼^_øYÞ^U/©ÈlHÚ~NÅ)^Vt^E~G¨Å^GN=§¡yÄ+C~RJ¾^]~BQ"f~FE*j*ëg^CÍM0zÏÝ:9tå^ZøþàÕµ£i¹k÷Ð˹n<:Áy8¡~I^CSKåWJÐ×~^~Rô^[Å(~D~Y~W9~L­
aóM~[^E¹^G³Cõ5~Z¡^Ç®X¹^MA~Q^C~T\õRC^UÔN²E¼ÒsßxÆÁÓDLÔ

Nice. Can you read that? I can't. I can't even pronounce it.

If it is not portable why is it universally used for documents that need
to be portable?

It isn't. Whenever I need a document to be portable, I use plain text.
Therefore I am a counter-example, and therefore PDF is not a
universally-used format.

There is no way I would ship a document in html. For a start it is
editable.

There is no way I would ship a document in PDF. For a start it is not easily
editable.

 

[MrG{DRGN}]

MrG{DRGN} said:


It's because the ISO guys never really understood the concept of
portability. They think the name "Portable Document Format" indicates a
portable document format.

I'm sorry Richard, I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. If
your're being serious fine. If you're being sarcastic I don't see the need
for it. I had no idea what the acronym PDF represented, and if html is not
as portable as PDF then I understand its use. I'm certainly not so naive as
to think windows is the only operating system in the world. I suppose I
should have simply kept my mouth shut rather than ask an exasperated
question about something I didn't understand. I mainly use windows, but I
have used Linux in the past, and I find navigating PDF files an annoyance
as opposed to. html. I wasn't trying to imply that the "ISO guys" should
cater to my desires, only express confusion and/or frustration with the
choice of format. A lack of knowledge on my part is not an excuse for you to
be sarcastic towards me. Given this I could have posed my question a little
less emotionally, and if this message reads like I'm yelling at you, rest
assured that I'm not.

Thanks

 

[Default User]

How about the standard itself?

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the
FAQ has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it),
which incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

Not for a website though, that $18 one is for personal use. You'd need
a site license. That's what my company did for a copy of the C++
standard on our internal web pages.



Brian

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

As you can put links into PDF files that behave as links in html files.

I this context html is the same as PDF except you can't protect an html
file the same as a PDF.

Certainly you can. You just don't publish it. The sole advantage
of PDF over HTML is that it can fairly easily embody diagrams. It
has a major disadvantage in that it will not adapt to the viewers
convenience. HTML has the major advantage that it is fundamentally
text, and thus is viewable, searchable, editable, and useful.

 

[Keith Thompson]

See the links in my sig. As far as precedence is concerned, the
standard does not spell out precedence, just BNF for parsing. The
best advice is not to assume any precedence whatsoever beyond
(multiplicative > additive > logical), but to use explicit
parentheses. This way both the writer and the reader will be sure
what is intended.

[...]

Good advice, but I'd say at least (unary > multiplicative > additive >
logical > assignment).

 

[pete]

True, but you can infer operator precedence from the grammar, and even
(I think) from the order of the subsections of section 6.5,
"Expressions".

So they say, but I use page 53.

 

[Netocrat]

(e-mail address removed)> writes [...]

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the FAQ
has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it), which
incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

That's assuming you want C99. I think you can also find drafts of the
C89/C90 standard; I'm not certain that the C90 standard itself is still
available.

It is but only in hard copy at around 30 GAP or 50 US.

It's also listed for soft copy purchase as a foreign-ratified Standard
in a few places, some collected on the wiki at:
<http://clc-wiki.net/wiki/Basics_Of_The_C_Standard#Obtaining_the_Standard>.

I don't know whether any of those sources are actually "in stock", but if
not, their websites are out of date.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

MrG{DRGN} said:

I'm sorry Richard, I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic.

Yes. Possibly both.

I find navigating PDF files an annoyance
as opposed to. html.

Likewise. For a start, it means I can't grep the darn thing.

I wasn't trying to imply that the "ISO guys" should
cater to my desires,

I don't see why not. What's so hard about producing an HTML version?

A lack of knowledge on my part is not an excuse for you
to be sarcastic towards me.

I agree - but I wasn't gunning for you. Sorry if you got caught in the
crossfire. ;-)

 

[Chris Hills]

MrG{DRGN} said:


Yes. Possibly both.


Likewise. For a start, it means I can't grep the darn thing.

PDF readers have search facilities built in.

I don't see why not. What's so hard about producing an HTML version?

Nothing but how do you lock it down? password protect it? embed serial
numbers?

HTML is editable and PDF is not which is a major advantage if you are
distributing documents like standards and data sheets.

 

[Chris Hills]

(e-mail address removed)> writes [...]

You can get a PDF copy of the C standard for about $18 (I think the FAQ
has links). Or you can get a free copy of n1124.pdf (Google it), which
incorporates the entire C99 standard plus TC1 and TC1.

That's assuming you want C99. I think you can also find drafts of the
C89/C90 standard; I'm not certain that the C90 standard itself is still
available.

It is but only in hard copy at around 30 GAP or 50 US.

It's also listed for soft copy purchase as a foreign-ratified Standard
in a few places, some collected on the wiki at:
<http://clc-wiki.net/wiki/Basics_Of_The_C_Standard#Obtaining_the_Standard>.

I don't know whether any of those sources are actually "in stock", but if
not, their websites are out of date.

I stock the hard copy version