### Question 18.10

What's a good book for learning C?

There are far too many books on C to list here; it's impossible to rate them all. Many people believe that the best one was also the first: The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie (``K&R,'' now in its second edition). Opinions vary on K&R's suitability as an initial programming text: many of us did learn C from it, and learned it well; some, however, feel that it is a bit too clinical as a first tutorial for those without much programming background.

An excellent reference manual is C: A Reference Manual, by Samuel P. Harbison and Guy L. Steele, now in its fourth edition.

Though not suitable for learning C from scratch, this FAQ list has been published in book form; see the Bibliography.

Mitch Wright maintains an annotated bibliography of C and Unix books; it is available for anonymous ftp from ftp.rahul.net in directory pub/mitch/YABL/.

This FAQ list's editor maintains a collection of previous answers to this question, which is available upon request. See also question 18.9.

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