C portability book

Chaim Schaap chaim at delftcc.UUCP
Thu Feb 8 04:13:40 AEST 1990


As a frequent reader of comp.lang.c, I'd like to let other readers know about
the publication of a book I wrote with Chaim Schaap which addresses many
of the recurring concerns of this netgroup.  It is called *Portable C* and
is published by Prentice Hall.

The book is a guide for the practicing C programmer on how to develop a 
style of coding which will port easily from one environment to others.  
In addition to many lurid examples of nonportable code, the book
gives a set of positive rules which, if you integrate them into your practice,
will spare your code from machine dependencies.  The book also includes the
"C-World," a semantic model of C which will deepen your understanding of the
language.  The C-World is a way of picturing the operations of a C program
in execution that does not depend on the architecture of the underlying 
machine.  

The book deals with the ANSI standard as well as various earlier
dialects of C, and suggests a style of coding that will work in both
ANSI and non-ANSI environments.  Writing portable code is more an art than
a science.  It is easier to show pitfalls than to recommend desirable 
practices.  Nonetheless, we spent many long hours trying to come up with a
set of rules that would retain the power of C while also working on a large
universe of machines and compilers.

We welcome feedback on our rules for portability, comments on the
book, and also descriptions of any unusual encounters you may have had 
yourself with the strange world of porting code.  You can email to
	henryr at nynexst.com
or to the usenet address from which you received this message.

|------------------------------------------------------------|
| Henry Rabinowitz, NYNEX Science & Technology, 914-683-2855 |
|   500 Westchester Ave 1B24, White Plains, NY 10604         |
|------------------------------------------------------------|



More information about the Comp.lang.c mailing list