Mastering algorithms with C

What Hacker News says

1. CanadaJun 2015
   I enjoyed Mastering Algorithms With C. After going through that book I was able to actually get things done. I recommend this because it walks through the implementation of basic data structures that you will be working with no matter what you're doing.

   K&R is a good reference, but I only found it useful after I knew enough to actually get things done. I didn't find it good to learn with, and I was already proficient in a couple of scripting languages.

   I also recommend Richard Stevens books. Advanced Unix Programming and Unix Network Programming are excellent. I'm not sure what you want to work on, so that might not be relevant.

   For studying how non-trivial things are implemented I like TCP/IP Illustrated Volume 2, and The Design and Implementation of the Freebsd Operating System.

   One of the things you're going to find about C that's different from higher level languages is that it's so minimal that you're going to have to build up a personal library of code to get things done.

   For code samples, I like to look at OpenBSD. It's all in one place and there's less cruft than most of the alternatives. This is useful because while the key tasks of a particular program might be described well in one of the books I mentioned, it's not the same as a real modern program. I've found it really helpful to actually look at something that's stood the test of time for inspiration. Also, it's man pages are awesome. I look at them often even when writing code on other operating systems.

   And remember, valgrind is your friend.

   Show morethread
2. fslothApr 2014
   Like others, I would suggest K&R. Perhaps after that, Lourdon's "Mastering algorithms with C". I've found that structuring any program around well understood datastructures and keeping it KISS after that takes you a very long way. Also applies to C. Like others have commented, stylistically the code in the linked book is perhaps not the best place to learn the best conventions for C. But! Writing an interpreter gives a huge kick and reading other peoples code is always nice.

   For real world projects, it's not a bad idea to implement your own memory manager (even if it's only a wrapper for malloc and free). For real world interpreters Lua (www.lua.org) is written in C, is quite widely used and is not too large - if interpreters are your interest. If you are into lisps Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html contains a the instructions for writing a lisp interpreter in any language.

   Show morethread
3. 1331Mar 2010
   I highly recommend _C: A Reference Manual_ by Harbinson and Steele. It has many tiny examples, but it is mainly used as a reference manual (as the title suggests).

   http://www.amazon.com/Reference-Manual-Samuel-P-Harbison/dp/...

   A good book for learning C is _Mastering Algorithms with C_ by Loudon. The source code is over-commented and contains too much white space, which is a bit annoying, but the content is quite nice.

   http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Algorithms-C-Kyle-Loudon/dp/...

   Show morethread
4. glouwbugOct 2020
   The alternative would be to rely on void* for all data types, which was really nicely presented in Mastering Algorithms with C by Kyle Loudon, but after working through it the lack of type safety for even basic types was a huge pain.

   At least with a bit of pre-processor magic, type safety and contiguous data is promised. Also, getting crafty with precompiled headers, one could dump all the expansions into a single templates.h, compile a .gch, and reap the benefits of hundreds of containered types with instantaneous compile times.

   Show morethread
5. epakaiOct 2019
   Most algorithms books take time to explain data structures. They are very intertwined topics. CLRS has 2/7 main sections dedicated to data structures and makes a fine reference, but it's also a lot of pseudocode and is quite in-depth. "Mastering Algorithms with C" is split nearly 50/50 between them and has real code examples though I don't care for the coding style.

   My personal preference has been Sedgewick's "Algorithms in C" which introduces elementary structures first and more advanced ones with their algorithms. Sedgewick's latest "Algorithms" has Java code if you prefer, and it still rates well.

   Show morethread
6. jetsnocDec 2011
   Thank you for the excellent book suggestion. I've only been writing in C for a few years now. I've been grappling for a better way to manage and abstract some of our utilities in our poorly written legacy application. Every linked list is custom, and every array malloced and freed on the fly -- it's so fragile that sometimes I feel paralyzed. It's been terribly wrong for a long time but I've personally lacked the experience and formal training to make it better through libraries and wrappers. About a year ago I picked up "Mastering Algorithms with C" and it was very helpful at teaching complex algorithms but never really helped me abstract our code base in to something portable and reusable.

   I'm certain this book will help me tremendously. :P

   Show morethread