473,320 Members | 1,820 Online
Bytes | Software Development & Data Engineering Community
Post Job

Home Posts Topics Members FAQ

Join Bytes to post your question to a community of 473,320 software developers and data experts.

standard reference manual

I am a long time subscriber to the comp.lang.c newsgroup.
Recently (over the last few years), comp.lang.c subscribers
have been citing and quoting ANSI/ISO C standards documents
to support their interpretation of the standards.
Evidently, they are using the standards documents
as sort of a "programmers' reference manual".
Personally, I find that the standards documents
are difficult to read, understand and interpret.
I feel compelled to consult the comp.std.c newsgroup
for their interpretation of the standards documents.

Were the standards documents intended to be used
as a reference manual by ordinary programmers?
Or were they mainly intended for use by compiler developers?
Is there any hope that the standards documents can be revised
to make them more useful to ordinary C programmers?
Are there other documents that C programmers should use
as a reference besides or instead of the standards documents?

Nov 14 '05 #1
14 1755
"E. Robert Tisdale" wrote:
....
Were the standards documents intended to be used
as a reference manual by ordinary programmers?
Or were they mainly intended for use by compiler developers?


They were intended for use both by developers interested in writing code
that can be ported to any conforming implementation, and by implementors
interested in writing conforming implementations. However, as is usually
the case when trying to serve two different goals, it serves neither one
as well as it would if the other goal could be ignored. I'd say it's
biased in favor of giving implementors what they need, leaving
developers to rely on third-party books for more readible descriptions
of C. However, implementors might feel differently about that.
Nov 14 '05 #2
In comp.std.c E. Robert Tisdale <E.**************@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

Were the standards documents intended to be used
as a reference manual by ordinary programmers?


Yes. I don't recommend it as casual reading (the plot and character
development leave a lot to be desired), but the committee tried very
hard to ensure that it would be accessible to the average (professional)
programmer.

-Larry Jones

I keep forgetting that rules are only for little nice people. -- Calvin
Nov 14 '05 #3
la************@ugsplm.com writes:
Yes. I don't recommend it as casual reading (the plot and character
development leave a lot to be desired), but the committee tried very
hard to ensure that it would be accessible to the average (professional)
programmer.


I use the standard as my primary C reference manual, and I
suspect that many others regulars in clc do so as well.
--
Ben Pfaff
email: bl*@cs.stanford.edu
web: http://benpfaff.org
Nov 14 '05 #4
E. Robert Tisdale wrote:
Were the standards documents intended to be used
as a reference manual by ordinary programmers?


As a reference, yes, but as a tutorial, no.

Nov 14 '05 #5
la************@ugsplm.com wrote:
In comp.std.c E. Robert Tisdale <E.**************@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:

Were the standards documents intended to be used
as a reference manual by ordinary programmers?


Yes. I don't recommend it as casual reading (the plot and character
development leave a lot to be desired), but the committee tried very
hard to ensure that it would be accessible to the average (professional)
programmer.


And for the greater part, it has succeeded, IMO.

Richard
Nov 14 '05 #6
la************@ugsplm.com writes:
Yes. I don't recommend it as casual reading (the plot and character
development leave a lot to be desired),


Some technical documents do have quite good character development, though.
For instance, Volume E of Donald E. Knuth's _Computers & Typesetting_.
Nov 14 '05 #7
In <40************@jpl.nasa.gov> "E. Robert Tisdale" <E.**************@jpl.nasa.gov> writes:
Were the standards documents intended to be used
as a reference manual by ordinary programmers?
Or were they mainly intended for use by compiler developers?


Footnote 1 provides the answers:

1) This International Standard is designed to promote the
portability of C programs among a variety of data-processing
systems. It is intended for use by implementors and
programmers.

Dan
--
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Da*****@ifh.de
Nov 14 '05 #8
In <c5**********@zcars0v6.ca.nortel.com> "Xiangliang Meng" <xi*************@hotmail.com> writes:
In this case, I recommend the book<C: A Reference Manual, Fifth Edition>
and the link http://www.careferencemanual.com/.

In my private view, this book is very helpful for you to understand C99.


Provided that its authors managed to understand the C99 standard.
Previous editions provided enough evidence that they missed some of the
finer points of C89...

Dan
--
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Da*****@ifh.de
Nov 14 '05 #9
in comp.lang.c i read:
In <c5**********@zcars0v6.ca.nortel.com> "Xiangliang Meng"
<xi*************@hotmail.com> writes:

In this case, I recommend the book<C: A Reference Manual, Fifth Edition>
and the link http://www.careferencemanual.com/.

In my private view, this book is very helpful for you to understand C99.


Provided that its authors managed to understand the C99 standard.
Previous editions provided enough evidence that they missed some of the
finer points of C89...


they have an errata web page and accept public submissions.

--
a signature
Nov 14 '05 #10
> Provided that its authors managed to understand the C99 standard.
Previous editions provided enough evidence that they missed some of the
finer points of C89...

how can we know that our compiler is in conformance of C89 or any
other standard.Is there a option/flag(like gcc -v gives the compiler
version) that says to which standard the compiler conforms to.

regards
rohit
Nov 14 '05 #11
En 93**************************@posting.google.com, rohit va escriure:
how can we know that our compiler is in conformance of C89


If a compiler claims conformance to the C standard, one of its requisites is
to come accompanied by a documentation. Which will tell you this kind of
things (and much more).

So there is even less excuses to RTFM ;-).
Antoine

Nov 14 '05 #12
In <m1*************@usa.net> those who know me have no need of my name <no****************@usa.net> writes:
in comp.lang.c i read:
In <c5**********@zcars0v6.ca.nortel.com> "Xiangliang Meng"
<xi*************@hotmail.com> writes:

In this case, I recommend the book<C: A Reference Manual, Fifth Edition>
and the link http://www.careferencemanual.com/.

In my private view, this book is very helpful for you to understand C99.


Provided that its authors managed to understand the C99 standard.
Previous editions provided enough evidence that they missed some of the
finer points of C89...


they have an errata web page and accept public submissions.


Which is of precious little help to the people willing to learn C99 from
their book: they're not supposed to be able to find the bugs in the book
and those who already know C99 are not supposed to read a less
authoritative book on the same topic.

Dan
--
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Da*****@ifh.de
Nov 14 '05 #13
pr******@yahoo.com (rohit) wrote in message news:<93**************************@posting.google. com>...
Provided that its authors managed to understand the C99 standard.
Previous editions provided enough evidence that they missed some of the
finer points of C89...

how can we know that our compiler is in conformance of C89 or any
other standard.Is there a option/flag(like gcc -v gives the compiler
version) that says to which standard the compiler conforms to.


It's possible to find out whether the implementors claim that a
compiler conforms, by checking the documentation. That documentation
should also tell you what options you need to invoke to put your
compiler into conforming mode; the default mode is almost never fully
conforming. The "-ansi" option puts many compilers into a mode that
conforms to C89, or at least comes close to conforming. There's less
agreement about how to put compilers into conformance with the C99
standard.

However, it's impossible to know for certain that a compiler actuall
does conform to C89 (or C99). It's possible to test for
non-conformance by using various test suites. However, passing those
tests does not confirm conformance; no finite number of test cases can
cover every possible way an implementation can be non-conforming.
Also, a key component of a conforming implmentation is the
implementations documentation of those things the standard requires
each implementation to define. That document will be in some natural
language; as a result, automated testing is impossible with current
technology. Basically, it must be read by a human expert, who will try
to judge whether the implementors have adequately defined everything
they're required to define. Inherently, that will be a judgement call.

In other words, there is no royal road to determining conformance. The
simplest approach is to hope that when implementors claim that their
implementations are conforming, they're telling the truth, and to
complain about non-conformance if and when we detect it.
Nov 14 '05 #14
Do you consider reading the C99 standard is the only way? Or would you like
to give more advice?

I guess there are many people want to master C across the world.

Thank you.

Regards,

Xiangliang Meng
"Dan Pop" <Da*****@cern.ch> wrote in message
news:c6**********@sunnews.cern.ch...
In <c5**********@zcars0v6.ca.nortel.com> "Xiangliang Meng" <xi*************@hotmail.com> writes:
In this case, I recommend the book<C: A Reference Manual, Fifth Edition>
and the link http://www.careferencemanual.com/.

In my private view, this book is very helpful for you to understand C99.


Provided that its authors managed to understand the C99 standard.
Previous editions provided enough evidence that they missed some of the
finer points of C89...

Dan
--
Dan Pop
DESY Zeuthen, RZ group
Email: Da*****@ifh.de

Nov 14 '05 #15

This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion.

Similar topics

11
by: Steven T. Hatton | last post by:
In TC++PL(SE) Stroustrup asserts there is a companion reference called _The Annotated C++ Language Standard_ by Koenig & Stroustrup. It doesn't show up on a google. What gives here? I know there...
2
by: ben | last post by:
Where i can find a descent C++ standard library reference manual? Does such a manual have to be compiler-specific, because different compilers have different implementations of the standard...
7
by: E. Robert Tisdale | last post by:
I am a long time subscriber to the comp.lang.c newsgroup. Recently (over the last few years), comp.lang.c subscribers have been citing and quoting ANSI/ISO C standards documents to support their...
10
by: Olaf Wasmuth | last post by:
Good morning, I am using doxygen to create a reference manual for C source code. Do you know of a way to similarly create a texinfo reference manual (which I would like to use in emacs...
8
by: Metaosp | last post by:
Is there any good on-line reference manual for the latest standard c++ library? In the Java world the library documents are so readily available that makes coding a lot easier, I really wish to...
1
by: Mike J | last post by:
Hear is the PHP manual reference search URL template http://www.php.net/manual-lookup.php?pattern=&lang=en Where is the query parameter. Quite often, I want to check a PHP function...
5
by: spibou | last post by:
I believe I have a good working knowledge of C but now I want to reach a point where I understand all the dirty little details. For example I understand what a "natural" macro will expand to but...
10
by: George2 | last post by:
Hello everyone, Are there any official site to check whether an API (like tolower or toLower) is platform specific API (e.g. Microsoft platform specific, Linux specific) or C common standard...
8
by: Wolfgang Draxinger | last post by:
As already noted a few months ago I'm working on a language, that is intended to be compiled into C as an intermediary. ATM I'm working with the latest publically avaliable draft of C99...
0
by: DolphinDB | last post by:
Tired of spending countless mintues downsampling your data? Look no further! In this article, you’ll learn how to efficiently downsample 6.48 billion high-frequency records to 61 million...
0
by: ryjfgjl | last post by:
ExcelToDatabase: batch import excel into database automatically...
1
isladogs
by: isladogs | last post by:
The next Access Europe meeting will be on Wednesday 6 Mar 2024 starting at 18:00 UK time (6PM UTC) and finishing at about 19:15 (7.15PM). In this month's session, we are pleased to welcome back...
0
by: ArrayDB | last post by:
The error message I've encountered is; ERROR:root:Error generating model response: exception: access violation writing 0x0000000000005140, which seems to be indicative of an access violation...
1
by: PapaRatzi | last post by:
Hello, I am teaching myself MS Access forms design and Visual Basic. I've created a table to capture a list of Top 30 singles and forms to capture new entries. The final step is a form (unbound)...
0
by: CloudSolutions | last post by:
Introduction: For many beginners and individual users, requiring a credit card and email registration may pose a barrier when starting to use cloud servers. However, some cloud server providers now...
1
by: Shællîpôpï 09 | last post by:
If u are using a keypad phone, how do u turn on JavaScript, to access features like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram....
0
by: af34tf | last post by:
Hi Guys, I have a domain whose name is BytesLimited.com, and I want to sell it. Does anyone know about platforms that allow me to list my domain in auction for free. Thank you
0
by: Faith0G | last post by:
I am starting a new it consulting business and it's been a while since I setup a new website. Is wordpress still the best web based software for hosting a 5 page website? The webpages will be...

By using Bytes.com and it's services, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

To disable or enable advertisements and analytics tracking please visit the manage ads & tracking page.