Advanced C Programming

I am not going to beat around the bush on this one; if you are trying to learn to progam (particularly in C), you need this book. It covers everything that the other books don't. It's not a reference, it's not a course on C (you are expected to atleast understand the syntax), and it's not an incredibly technical introduction to computer science. What it is, however, is an excellent introduction to concepts that the beginning programmer will probably not absorb on their own own. If you've had any university level computer science courses, though, you will probably be familiar with the material already. I picked up this book when I was 15, and it's the most useful piece of reading material I've ever purchased.

Topics:

• Review: Gets you up to speed on pointer and array syntax.
• Basic Data Structures: Linked lists, stacks, hash tables, and queues.
• String Handling: Painstaking detail and advice for many of the stdio string related functions.
• Advanced Input And Output: How to get the data structures into and out of files.
• Bit Manipulation: Anything to do with getting at the 1s and 0s.
• Recursion: Covers recursion and how it applies to binary trees.

In addition to these incredibly tasty chapters, there is information on the standard time related functions, multidimensional arrays, pointers to functions, signals, and several smaller topics. The book weighs in at 301 pages, is full of code examples (full programs, not little snippets), and has quizzes with answers. Read It.