RE: Book questions
-----Original Message-----
From: Bret Busby [mailto:bret.busby@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2015 10:17 AM
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Book questions
On 09/04/2015, Petter Adsen <petter@synth.no> wrote:
> On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 23:00:46 +1000
> Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Petter Adsen <petter@synth.no> writes:
>>
>> > For a long time I've been meaning to learn more about regular
>> > expressions, and I found the following books: "Mastering Regular
>> > Expressions" and "Sed & awk", both from O'Reilly. Does anyone have
>> > any experience with these, and an opinion as to which I should
>> > start with?
>>
>> i have the former, and highly recommend it. :-) i've not read the
>> latter, so can't comment on it.
>
> Thanks, I guess both are worth reading, as sed is something I
> definitely should be more familiar with.
>
>> > I also found the K&R book, "The UNIX Programming Environment" by
>> > Kernighan and Pike, and "UNIX Systems Programming for SVR4" from
>> > O'Reilly. Since I want to learn C I know I need to read the first
>> > of these, but I was wondering how the other two are, if anyone here
>> > has read them.
>>
>> i have a copy of "The UNIX Programming Environment". i have in no way
>> read it cover-to-cover, but some comments i can make on it
>> are:
>>
>> * i feel it's useful for cultivating the classic Unix 'toolkit'
>> mindset,
>> where one connects various programs in various ways to produce
>> certain results.
>
> Bonus point.
>
>> * Being published in 1984, it discusses "/the/ shell" instead of
>> "a
>> shell", and thus doesn't cover the differences between the
>> various shells now available, e.g. bash vs. zsh vs. fish
>> vs. dash etc.
>
> Well, that could be a good thing, as I could probably find good
> shell-specific documentation online later.
>
>> * The "Document Preparation" chapter feels somewhat esoteric given
>> our
>> current context of things like LaTeX, Pandoc, Scribus and so on.
>
> Yes, I just had a look at it, it seems it focuses on writing man
> pages. I have other books on LaTeX anyhow.
>
>> > Also, are there other books I might want to supplement these with?
>>
>> i guess it depends on what other specific areas you're interested in
>> .... i have a copy of O'Reilly's tome "Unix Power Tools", and still
>> regularly find it very useful.
>
> I'm mostly interested in getting a good foundation in C programming,
> but generic UNIX tools/shell books that are good are always useful. I
> find learning is easier from an actual book than electronic text, but
> I must confess I haven't really tried reading books on my iThing. The
> K&R book was available, though, so I might buy that just to try it.
> I'll put "Unix Power Tools" on my shopping list - thanks :)
>
You have not stated the reason/use for your learning to program in "C".
Apart from the book "The C Programming Language", by Kernihan and Ritchie, which, I believe, was used more as a reference book, than a workbook, for learning "C", a book that has also been used, I believe, as a university textbook for "C" programming courses, is, available from amazon;
"
A Book on C: Programming in C (4th Edition) Paperback – January 8, 1998 by Al Kelley (Author), Ira Pohl (Author) "
"
Product Details
Paperback: 726 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 4 edition (January 8, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0201183994
ISBN-13: 978-0201183993
"
Although, it may have been an earlier edition that was used, when I had encountered the reference to the Kelley and Pohl textbook.
I had learnt (a bit of) "C" programming, about 25-30 years ago, at a technical college, and, whilst some courses in programming languages, were taught over a half-year period, the "C" programming language was taught at the technical college that I attended, over a year. It was quite intensive, with pointers to pointers to pointers, and functions returning pointers to functions, and pointers to functions being passed and returned through functions, etc, and, from memory, in the second half of the year, one of the assignments, was programming curses. This was all before GUI's. I think that the lecture notes, were far more valuable, than the (then) available textbooks.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............
I have taught C several times at the University level. I typically use K&R as the reference and Engineering Problem Solving in C by D. Etter as the text.
Larry
"So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Archive: [🔎] CACX6j8PLQ7UXDnwhNdQTDLJf+vw5P_P+gLn3f_wbDM5C6TegPw@mail.gmail.com">https://lists.debian.org/[🔎] CACX6j8PLQ7UXDnwhNdQTDLJf+vw5P_P+gLn3f_wbDM5C6TegPw@mail.gmail.com
Reply to: