C: Tutorials in .txt format requested

[redblade]

Hi.

I'm currently trying to learn C again. I'm using NetBSD and I don't have a pdf app installed, as most of the torrent books or tutorials are available in .pdf format.

Does any one have a tutorial in .txt format so I can run it on my NetBSD partition (I'm using twm as the window mananger).

I've got the ones from LSD Docs, Aminet, and a couple for textfiles.com if any others are floating out there would be appreciated.

TIA.

[kamelito]

Hi
http://www.synchrondata.com/pheaven2/www/area4.htm

I suppose that you can browse that one using Lynx.
http://jakeworld.org/JakeWorld/index...e-c-tutorials/
Kamelito

[Leffmann]

In my opinion, ignore "C tutorials" in .txt files found on old Amiga disks. They are most likely whipped together by Joe Schmoe back in the day, and that kind of material can never be a good or reliable source for learning. Stay away from it.

Have a look at http://www.iso-9899.info/wiki/Books for starters. A good book to start with is "The C Programming Language" written by Dennis Ritchie himself. It's been floating around on the Internet since forever, and it is in PDF format, but there has to be freely available PDF readers for BSD so don't let that stop you.

[Hewitson]

Why not simply install evince?

[phx]

Originally Posted by redblade

I'm using NetBSD and I don't have a pdf app installed

I'm also using NetBSD as my main OS. Hewitson is right: evince is a nice PDF reader and it doesn't depend on a full Gnome or Enlightenment environment. I'm using it with Openbox as window manager.
Alternatively install xpdf from pkgsrc.

[IFW]

The K&R book is still the definitive source on the original C language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%26R
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language
However do keep in mind, that it can only give you some directions and the idea behind the language nowadays, as the language itself has drastically evolved especially during the past few years with the acceptance of C++11 - and C++14 on the horizon.
None of the books for the recent languages would give a good background for C itself though, so I'd say start with that, but don't try to learn it - code in it won't even compile these days unless your compiler is in legacy mode...

[redblade]

Hi guys.

My wireless card is not supported with NetBSD but is detected with the quick splash linux that is on my Asus netbook. That's why I don't have any .pdf viewers or any other packages installed. I also don't have a ethernet cable.

Also alot of those packages seem to need other packages to run, i.e you download you a amiga util, then you need explode.library, req.library, arp.library.

But I will look into them . Thanks.

I couldn't even get the x11 source to some of the basic default X Apps to compile . Still persistence is the key.

@kamelito: Excellent, Lynx doesn't require any external packages I've also visited that first site you mentioned, I forgot there was a C section, I'm pretty sure there was a Amiga or a 68k assembler section at one stage.

@phx: Is it possible to use Amiga bitmap fonts under X11? or as the console font?

@IFW: I remember doing a 'Learn C in 3 days' tutorial book, The NetBSD compiler kept bringing up security errors, warning me to use other functions instead.

[kamelito]

Unfortunately K&R is a bit out of date regarding new ISO standards, namely C99 and C11 now. They should update it like what did Rago for Stevens book, "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment". Kamelito

[phx]

Originally Posted by redblade

My wireless card is not supported with NetBSD

Which chip is on that card? Or do you know the PCI vendor/product? Maybe it is supported in the current source.

You should really get your network up and running. Even the name NETbsd suggests that you should have a network.

@phx: Is it possible to use Amiga bitmap fonts under X11? or as the console font?

Theoretically yes. For the NetBSD/amiga console or wscons?

The format of the Amiga 8x8 console font in the kernel is just an array of 8 bytes for each character, starting with ASCII code 32. Here is the source for a dumpfont tool, which creates a NetBSD source out of an Amiga font:
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetB...tand/dumpfont/
You have to replace src/sys/arch/amiga/dev/kf_iso8859_1_8x8.c and compile a new kernel.

For wscons you would use wsconscfg(8).

There may also be Amiga font to BDF converter for X11. But I don't know any.

@IFW: I remember doing a 'Learn C in 3 days' tutorial book, The NetBSD compiler kept bringing up security errors, warning me to use other functions instead.

Then this book is probably no longer up to date.

[TheDarkCoder]

To study C language I would recommend K&R only to people who already know how to program in a different language and have a certain programming experience.

For beginners, that have already a little programming knowledge I recommend
this book

The book does a good balance of 2 different (and sometimes colliding) didactic goal:
1) introduction to programming
2) explain the C language technicalities (which are definitely not trivial)

For absolute beginners, I suggest to start learning programming with a different language.

my 2 cents

[IFW]

Actually, the original C language is really easy to learn if you know any kind of assembly... so K&R is a very good choice then.
If you don't, then the concept of pointers etc. can get fairly weird and as Dark Coder says you might be better off learning something more trivial first.
You can however get away without using "classic" C features if you stick with the high level and abstract stuff in C++11 or later - in fact they try to make you forget there that these things ever existed in the languages

[Minuous]

There's no point learning C99 etc. The best Amiga C compilers target ANSI C (aka C89) so that is what should be learnt. Plus the new features in C99 and onwards are mostly useless and in some cases can break backwards compatibility.

[phx]

You are certainly joking?

I don't see how new features like snprintf, stdint.h, variable-length arrays, long long (64-bit), etc. can be useless? They improve security (e.g. snprintf) and portability (e.g. stdint.h types) of your code.

How can any code that you write today in C99 break backwards compatibility?

[Minuous]

OK, "mostly useless" is an exaggeration, but I've never missed any of it except long long. But anyway, if the C compiler doesn't support it then it can't be used, so I avoid using those extensions. Perhaps I should write some header files to enable SAS/C to support snprintf(), stdint.h, etc. or has someone already done this?

>How can any code that you write today in C99 break backwards compatibility?

The auto keyword was redefined in a non-compatible way for C++ 11. However, researching further, that seems to only apply to C++, not C. (The two seem to be diverging in different directions, which is odd because one of the main advantages of C++ was supposed to be that it was a superset of C, which is becoming less true.)

[Hewitson]

Wouldn't a modern compiler such as GCC be far more efficient than SAS/C?

[Minuous]

I do have GCC (StormC 4), however it is slower and produces more bloated executables, compared to SAS/C.

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by phx

I don't see how new features like snprintf, stdint.h, variable-length arrays, long long (64-bit), etc. can be useless?

Why is it called long long and not double long? (or quad word?)

[Hewitson]

To avoid confusion.

Going back to PDF readers for *nix systems, muPDF is lightweight (can run successfully on a Raspberry Pi, for instance) and has fewer prerequisites than most PDF readers.

[redblade]

The C Programming book I brought in New Zealand years ago was called

The C Programming Guide 2nd edition and it was printed in 1985.

It also used the function getch() which was not in stdio.h maybe that function was around in the early 80s.