Online C reference manuals [closed]

Question

I've studied C programming in college some years ago and have developed some medium applications back then (nothing serious). Now I have to develop some more 'advanced' C applications (involving POSIX threads and RPC), but right now I'm a little rusty even with the basics.

Can anyone recommend me good online C reference manuals? This may help me get in tune faster.

Battue

Answer 1

• C standard library reference (both C89 and C99)
• C89 library reference guide
• GNU C tutorial (more than just a tutorial, quite a useful reference)

I got these all from a previous similar question on SO. I would like to credit the original posters, but unfortunately cannot seem to find that question.

Mississippian

That first link is dead. – Matthaus

Second link died a while ago, too. :( – Christensen

Answer 2

For the very basic I found this reference card very useful. Doesn't help with more advanced functions but it can help get the rust off.

Aklog

It did help a lot as a quick reference while programming. Thanks! – Battue

Answer 3

It's not online, but hands down the best C reference is Harbison & Steele (yeah - it's better than K&R).

You can get the 4th edition for basically shipping (I don't know what improvements were made in the 5th ed.):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0133262243

Jemie

Can you qualify "better" than K&R? – Peppergrass

Well, it's just an opinion (and it's been a while since I've even looked at K&R), but it's comprehensive, clear, covers all the variants - pre-standard, standard, Unix, and even a bit of information on differences between C & C++. From my recollection, K&R is more of a tutorial than a reference. – Jemie

@MichaelBurr: The fifth edition can be found online here. – Couplet

Answer 4

Don't forget man pages. If you are developing on any UNIX-derived platform (Linux, BSD, Cygwin) you can almost always do something like man printf or info printf to get documentation for any library function.

Hoitytoity

Make sure you do man 3 printf - that one always trips me up. – Cameleer

Answer 5

The best C reference by far is Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" in it's dead tree form. It's compact and complete.

For an online reference, you might try Brian Kernighan's Programming in C Tutorial.

Peppergrass

Answer 6

manuals

• http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/3bstk3k5.aspx

tutorial

• http://www.physics.drexel.edu/students/courses/Comp_Phys/General/C_basics/
• http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial.html

Straitlaced

The microsoft's link is for C++ not C! – Fanchan

This one looks like C. msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fw5abdx6.aspx – Straitlaced

Answer 7

the C book is freely available on-line. It is not really a reference manual, but still a pretty good resource. From the website:

This is the online version of The C Book, second edition by Mike Banahan, Declan Brady and Mark Doran, originally published by Addison Wesley in 1991. This version is made freely available.

While this book is no longer in print, its content is still very relevant today. The C language is still popular, particularly for open source software and embedded programming. We hope this book will be useful, or at least interesting, to people who use C.

Looker

Answer 8

The best online reference for C and C++ is probably www.cplusplus.com

QuantumPete

Manifesto

Answer 9

I would recommend reading through the comp.lang.c FAQ at least once to help get the rust off. For reference material, you might want to grab a copy of the C Standard, the latest version of C99 with TC3 included is available for free here, for C89 the last draft version is available as a text file or you can pick up a copy of the The Annotated ANSI C Standard for a few bucks and have a hard copy of the actual standard (just ignore the "annotations" on the right-hand pages). Since you are using POSIX you might want to become more familiar with the Single Unix Specification which includes the Standard C library as well as the POSIX functions, you can read/download SUSv3 at the Open Group (registration required but free and quick).

For an offline resource I would also recommend C: A Reference Manual (5th Edition) by Harbison & Steele, it thoroughly covers every language feature and standard function of C and documents differences between the various standard versions.

Mishear