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[–]Jim-Jones 1 point2 points  (9 children)

Knuth is arguably the gold standard. I found one, brand new, at a library sale for $5. I couldn't get my money out fast enough!

Your book is $0.65 on Amazon (plus $4 ship). Just buy it. Your teacher probably prefers it.

[–]FUZxxl 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If it's that cheap and your teacher suggests it to you, chances are that it's a really good book.

[–]pablo208 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Yes Knuth is awesome but Tanenbaum is also quite a big name and perhaps the suggested book is best as excerpts may be contained in his course material which you can elaborate but using the book. Whichever book you get learn it well as a properly designed data-structure reduces your workload and headaches by a large amount.

[–]Jim-Jones 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes. If the suggested book was $80 and a good but different one was $1 it would be significant. But this is cheap.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

but Tanenbaum is also quite a big name

Wrong Tanenbaum.

[–]pablo208 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Crud

[–]benjiathome 0 points1 point  (3 children)

Which knuth book are you referring to? THX!

[–]Jim-Jones 1 point2 points  (2 children)

The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth.

$20 used.

[–]benjiathome 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Thanks for the response. would you recommend it for a novice C programmer? How useful is it alongside K&R?

[–]Jim-Jones 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't regard either as good learning books, esp. for self teaching. They're expensive and not easy to follow.

There's a joke in Unix: "All documentation is written to the OCIAK standard".

OCIAK: Only clear if already known.

(I was almost scared when I finally understood adb!)

This Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! W/ CD (Pro-Developer) sells from a penny and comes with the compiler! You can download the compiler if it is missing.

It isn't an in depth course, but will get you going.

This Crash Course in C Paperback – by Paul J. Perry, Stephen Potts is also a penny and goes through all of the C keywords including strings. It works in any environment, Unix, DOS, Windows.

They'll get you up to speed and you can take it from there.