The Standard C Library

What Hacker News says

1. rramadassApr 2026
   People should check out P.J. Plauger's books, specifically;

   1) The Standard C Library - One of the best books to learn about industrial-strength C programming implementation techniques.

   2) The C++ Standard Template Library - Similar to above but for C++ STL.

   Both the above were licensed through his company Dinkumware. I had an opportunity to license, study and use them for a project and found the experience quite rewarding. It is not as complicated and relatively easier to understand than GNU libc and libstdc++. Of course i have both the books which explain the implementation.

   3) His other set of interesting books are the 3-vol Programming on Purpose; a series of essays on various topics. The 1st is on Software Design, the 2nd is on Software People and the 3rd is on Software Technology. They also contain lots of nuggets of wisdom which are still relevant today. My favourite is the one on software design - https://archive.org/details/programmingonpur0000plau

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2. mesrikSep 2025
   Anyone else find it odd that C99 strftime() %F and %T equivalents did not make it later revisions ISO 8601 and RFC 3339 ?

   https://en.cppreference.com/w/c/chrono/strftime

   Man page strftime shows,

   %F Equivalent to %Y-%m-%d (the ISO 8601 date format). (C99) %T The time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M:%S). (SU)

   The Op linked page did not recognise these. I tried with the "%FT%T%z" which works fine with date and strftime().

   I've probably used %F and %T about 20 years with no issues linux, bsd and mac that I wrote code over the years.

   BTW, It would be nice to see some reference or comparison how systems stdlib implementations match with these standards if there is one.

   One gripe I've got with RFC3999 and it's not nice to have the semicolon in filename if you intend to use it file or directory name. As it conflicts and easily becoome issue when not quoted while using rsync or any command that thinks colon (:) separates and indicates host name. I'm not sure if colon would cause issues with windows but there is chance it could as it's used indicating device name.

   ps. I had to implement many stdlib time.h defined functions my own between -89 - 92 for my then work as Turbo C 2.0 and 3.0/3.1 did not implement these. I recall that last time I touched these and fixed issues was when I got P.J. Plaugers The Standard C Library book when it was brand new -92. When earlier proprietary C-compliers libraries sources had not been available, that Plaugers book was was great help for many :)

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3. sargstuffAug 2022
   "The Standard C Library" by P.J. Plauger. would be a match for stuff discussed in K&R.

   Although, K&R is pre-C 89 standard, Plauger is more along the lines of C-89/92 standard.

   More recent "standard ansi C library" : https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Programming/Standard_librari...

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4. rramadassOct 2021
   Indeed; In C/C++ land this is rather the norm.

   I learnt more about C and C++ from studying Plauger's The Standard C Library and Plauger/Stepanov's The C++ Standard Template Library. I also remember learning Object-Oriented Framework design from MFC Internals.

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5. rramadassOct 2020
   Since C++ is a "Multi-Paradigm" language your study of C++ code should include the various different expressions of the language. Also it is best if you can have a book explaining and walking you through the codebase. To that end i can suggest the following from my own experience;

   * To study OO expression of C++ via Class libraries/Frameworks i recommend a study of "Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) library" paired with the book MFC Internals. The code is available with the installation of Visual Studio.

   * P.J.Plauger's The Standard C Library and The C++ Standard Template Library(with Alexander Stepanov, Meng Lee and David Musser) will teach you excellent C and C++ Generic programming skills. Code available with the standard C++ toolchain installation.

   * The Boost libraries paired with the book C++ Template Metaprogramming: Concepts, Tools, and Techniques from Boost and Beyond.

   * The FXT library of Algorithms by Jorg Arndt (https://www.jjj.de/fxt/fxtpage.html) along with its book Matters Computational for writing optimized C++ code.

   I would also suggest reading the following two classics to learn designing in C++;

   * Multi-Paradigm Design for C++ by James Coplien.

   * Scientific and Engineering C++: An Introduction with Advanced Techniques and Examples by Barton and Nackman.

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6. kytingSep 2020
   Also P.J. Plauger's The Standard C Library
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