C Language Programming Resources
This page deals with programming in C.
Last revised: Sunday January 19, 2003 05:50.
- Is Clarity More Important Than Correctness?
- If your program is clear you can make it correct.
Can you be sure your program is correct if it isn't clear?
- J. Blustein <jamie@csd.uwo.ca>, How to Debug.
Algonquin C Programming Information
These first items are selected to be of use to people writing programs in the Algonquin environment.
Help with debugging
 | You can make sure all your malloc/free function calls are matched by using the MEM software package. It replaces these C Library function calls: malloc, calloc, realloc, strdup, and free. Select here for details. You can pick up the software itself by selecting here. |
Miscellaneous
| Compiling at home and at Algonquin: How to do it! |
| Creating a DOS executable (to enable redirection) in Turbo C and Borland C. |
| Catching Integer Overflow: How to do it. |
| Changing the Run-Time Stack and Heap Size: Check this out if you have a large program that keeps faulting. You may be running out of internal heap or stack space. |
| Defensive C Programming: Avoid C traps. |
| Robert Allison of Algonquin College describes how to write C programs. |
| Improving and Fixing C Code, using examples from Algonquin student assignments. |
| Different ways to write Zero in C |
Highlights and Excerpts from the WWW
These are items that I think C programmers should see.
- Rob Pike on C program style.
- A program is a sort of publication. It's meant to be read by the programmer, another programmer (perhaps yourself a few days, weeks or years later), and lastly a machine. The machine doesn't care how pretty the program is - if the program compiles, the machine's happy - but people do, and they should.
- Henry Spencer's 10 Commandments of C Programming
- ...Thou shalt not follow the NULL pointer, for chaos and madness await thee at its end...
- An excellent C topic reference
- This points to many useful topics about C programming, including a bit of C history such as the B programming language that I used before I learned C: B didn't believe in typechecking, period. There was only one type, the machine word, and the programmer was responsible for applying to a variable only such operators as made sense.
C on the World Wide Web
| Steve Summit's Introductory C course. (highly recommended!) | ||||||||||||||||||
| A tutorial on programming in C prepared by David Marshall of Department of Computing Mathematics at Cardiff University of Wales, United Kingdom | ||||||||||||||||||
| A mirror of Introduction to Object Oriented Programming Using C++: a tutorial on programming in C++, sponsored by the Globewide Network Academy [GNA] of free Internet courses | ||||||||||||||||||
| Frequently Asked Questions about C programming. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Lysator Computer Society's Hotlinks to C Resources | ||||||||||||||||||
| Ten Gotchas of the C language | ||||||||||||||||||
| Information sources include:
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| Coding standards include:
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| C language courses/references include:
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| Other bits and pieces:
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Security Issues in C Programs
The Internet is full of security incidents arising from code that forgets to check for buffer overflow. This is a serious programming error, and I don't accept student code that does not protect itself against overflowing its own internal buffers. Check the size of the buffer before you append anything to it!
| CERT security advisory concerning failure to handle sign-extension in characters |
| CIAC security advisory concerning failure to check for input buffer overflow |
| AUSCERT security advisory concering failure to check for input buffer overflow |
| SANS Digest: CURMUDGEON'S EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Buffer overflows appear to be the most common problems reported in May, with denial-of-service problems a distant second. Many of the buffer overflow problems are probably the result of careless programming, and could have been found and corrected by the vendors, before releasing the software, if the vendors had performed elementary testing or code reviews along the way. |
C oddities
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest has some prime examples of how to write very confusing C code.
Once you think you understand loops and switch statements, see Duff's Device.
Last revised: Sunday January 19, 2003 05:50.
Email comments to Ian! D. Allen idallen@freenet.carleton.ca
