Igor Stasenko wrote:
On 8 November 2012 17:13, Sven Van Caekenberghe <[email protected]> wrote:
On 08 Nov 2012, at 20:29, Stéphane Ducasse <[email protected]> wrote:
I told you several time, do you think that a guy do not understand what is a
pointer because he does not know how to write it in C?
Give a chance to professionals to learn. We are not talking about explaining
what is a pointer, but explaining the
potential problems and challenges
But once you start using C pointers, you can very easily do something wrong. It
might be a very subtle error and it might not manifest itself immediately, alas
there won't be a Debugger popping up, just a coredump.
yes, that what i meant. and without some practice in C, you are really
lacking understanding that
pointers is actually a mine field: one day you can walk safely,
another day be blown up at first step.
With the proviso that I haven't programmed in C for a long time, and
that the publication date is 1994, I would recommend the book "Expert C
Programming: Deep C Secrets" [2] for intermediate level programmers to
learn more about the intricacies of pointers versus arrays, automatic
type promotion, deciphering declarations - which are some of the things
that I guess are particularly important for interfacing between
languages. One great thing is that the book is _very_ readable, with
humorous anecdotes scattered amongst the technical material.
I have put together a couple of sample pages [2] for review. I am
unable to tell how dated some of the material is, so I would be happy to
donate a copy as a community contribution*, which might be posted
between interested parties. Kind of a community library that helps
people communicate at a common level. If it helps grow the number of
people working at that level interfacing with external libraries, then
ultimately that benefits me also.
*Unless someone can recommend another book, since there must be many
more good ones since then.
[1]
http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van-Linden/product-reviews/0131774298
[2] http://files.openinworld.com/misc/ExpertCProgramming-Sample.pdf
cheers -ben
