Igor Stasenko wrote:
On 8 November 2012 17:13, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
On 08 Nov 2012, at 20:29, Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr> wrote:
I told you several time, do you think that a guy do not understand what is a pointer because he does not know how to write it in C? Give a chance to professionals to learn. We are not talking about explaining what is a pointer, but explaining the potential problems and challenges
But once you start using C pointers, you can very easily do something wrong. It might be a very subtle error and it might not manifest itself immediately, alas there won't be a Debugger popping up, just a coredump.
yes, that what i meant. and without some practice in C, you are really lacking understanding that pointers is actually a mine field: one day you can walk safely, another day be blown up at first step.
With the proviso that I haven't programmed in C for a long time, and that the publication date is 1994, I would recommend the book "Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets" [2] for intermediate level programmers to learn more about the intricacies of pointers versus arrays, automatic type promotion, deciphering declarations - which are some of the things that I guess are particularly important for interfacing between languages. One great thing is that the book is _very_ readable, with humorous anecdotes scattered amongst the technical material. I have put together a couple of sample pages [2] for review. I am unable to tell how dated some of the material is, so I would be happy to donate a copy as a community contribution*, which might be posted between interested parties. Kind of a community library that helps people communicate at a common level. If it helps grow the number of people working at that level interfacing with external libraries, then ultimately that benefits me also. *Unless someone can recommend another book, since there must be many more good ones since then. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Expert-Programming-Peter-van-Linden/product-reviews/01... [2] http://files.openinworld.com/misc/ExpertCProgramming-Sample.pdf cheers -ben