CommunityNews

CommunityNews

Beej’s Guide to C Programming (pdf)

Foreword

No point in wasting words here, folks, let’s jump straight into the C code:

    E((ck?main((z?(stat(M,&t)?P+=a+'{'?0:3:
    execv(M,k),a=G,i=P,y=G&255,
    sprintf(Q,y/'@'-3?A(*L(V(%d+%d)+%d,0)

And they lived happily ever after. The End.

What’s this? You say something’s still not clear about this whole C programming language thing?

Well, to be quite honest, I’m not even sure what the above code does. It’s a snippet from one of the entries in the 2001 International Obfuscated C Code Contest1, a wonderful competition wherein the entrants attempt to write the most unreadable C code possible, with often surprising results.

The bad news is that if you’re a beginner in this whole thing, all C code you see probably looks obfuscated! The good news is, it’s not going to be that way for long.

What we’ll try to do over the course of this guide is lead you from complete and utter sheer lost confusion on to the sort of enlightened bliss that can only be obtained though pure C programming. Right on…

Read in full here:

This thread was posted by one of our members via one of our news source trackers.

Most Liked

mafinar

mafinar

Ah, Beej’s guide. Brings back fond memories when I was struggling to learn network programming.

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
No matter what language or platform you’re using, the CLI will help you work more effectively. Turn tedious chores into quick tasks: read...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Does your Rails code suffer from bloat, brittleness, or inaccuracy? Cure these problems with the regular application of test-driven devel...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Get your Raspberry Pi up and running and doing cool stuff. You’ll start with the basics: adding hardware, installing and configuring Debi...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Programming at industry level requires new skills—you’ll build programs that dwarf anything you’ve done on your own. This book introduces...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Knowing how to create domain-specific languages (DSLs) can give you a huge productivity boost. Instead of writing code in a general-purpo...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
As a techie, you have a tougher time finding and winning the right job. Companies are more demanding. Just like you, your competition is ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Whether you’re making the switch from a traditional centralized version control system or are a new programmer just getting started, this...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Imagine you’re using the world’s most sophisticated word processor: it has every function imaginable, except one. For some reason, they f...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Want to create a culture of innovation? Work as management teams and encourage learning and experimentation. Johanna Rothman @jroth...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Learn the tools and techniques of effective engineering leadership. James Stanier @jstanier edited by Adaobi Obi Tulton @aotulton A...
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Ruby, Io, Prolog, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell. With Seven Languages in Seven Weeks, by Bruce A. Tate, you’ll go beyond the syntax—and...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Tailwind CSS is an exciting new CSS framework that allows you to design your site by composing simple utility classes to create complex e...
New
AstonJ
Continuing the discussion from Thinking about learning Crystal, let’s discuss - I was wondering which languages don’t GC - maybe we can c...
New
husaindevelop
Inside our android webview app, we are trying to paste the copied content from another app eg (notes) using navigator.clipboard.readtext ...
New
First poster: bot
zig/http.zig at 7cf2cbb33ef34c1d211135f56d30fe23b6cacd42 · ziglang/zig. General-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaini...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Explore the power of Ash Framework by modeling and building the domain for a real-world web application. Rebecca Le @sevenseacat and ...
New
AstonJ
This is a very quick guide, you just need to: Download LM Studio: https://lmstudio.ai/ Click on search Type DeepSeek, then select the o...
New
NewsBot
Node.js v22.14.0 has been released. Link: Release 2025-02-11, Version 22.14.0 'Jod' (LTS), @aduh95 · nodejs/node · GitHub
New
RobertRichards
Hair Salon Games for Girls Fun Girls Hair Saloon game is mainly developed for kids. This game allows users to select virtual avatars to ...
New