Module Learn C the Hard Way

This is a rough in-progress dump of the book.

Please don't feel cheated, but this book is not about teaching you C programming.

The traditional first exercise, exercises 0, is where you setup your computer for the rest of this book.

Note: I mention a "PDF" in the video but that's not available anymore.

We're going to use a program called make to simplify building your exercise code.

Keep that Makefile around since it'll help you spot errors, and we'll be adding to it when we need to automate more things.

This is a video-focused exercise where I show you how to use the debugger that comes with your computer to debug your programs, detect errors, and even debug processes that are currently running.

When you learned your first programming language, it most likely involved going through a book, typing in code you didn't quite understand, and then trying to figure out how it worked.

After learning the operators, it's time to memorize the keywords and basic syntax structures you'll be using.

You should be getting a grasp of how a simple C program is structured, so let's do the next simplest thing and make some variables of different types: ...

In C, there really isn't a Boolean type.

The first looping construct I'll show you is the while-loop, and it's the simplest, useful loop you could possibly use in C.

In other languages like Ruby, you have a switch-statement that can take any expression.

This exercise shows you that C stores its strings simply as an array of bytes, terminated with the '\0' (nul) byte.

In the last exercise, you did math but with a '\0' (nul) character.

You can make an array of various types with the idea that a string and an array of bytes are the same thing.

Up until now, we've just used functions that are part of the `stdio.

Pointers are famous mystical creatures in C.

In this exercise, you'll learn how to make a struct, point a pointer at it, and use it to make sense of internal memory structures.

In this exercise, you're going to make a big leap in difficulty and create an entire small program to manage a database.

Functions in C are actually just pointers to a spot in the program where some code exists.

There's a reoccurring problem in C that we've been dancing around, but I'm going to solve it in this exercise using a set of macros I developed.

I've already taught you about my awesome debug macros, and you've been using them.

This exercise will be a complete compendium of the available C data types and flow control structures you can use.

The concept of scope seems to confuse quite a few people when they first start programming.

This exercise is a brain teaser where I introduce you to one of the most famous hacks in C called Duff's device, named after Tom Duff the inventor.

You've been using printf to print things, and that's great and all, but you need more.

In C, you can create your own versions of functions like printf and scanf by creating a variable argument function or vararg funtion.

This is a small project for you to attempt on your own.

You have now learned most of the basics of C programming and are ready to start becoming a serious programmer.

In the next three exercises you'll create a skeleton project directory to use in building your C programs later.

A central part of any C program is the ability to link it to libraries that your OS provides.

Automated testing is used frequently in other languages like Python and Ruby, but rarely used in C.

At this point in the book, it's time to introduce you to the most common kinds of UB that you will encounter.

The purpose of this book is to teach you how your computer really works, and included in that is how various data structures and algorithms function.

I'm going to cover two algorithms for a linked list that involve sorting.

This is an array that grows on its own, and have most of the same features as a linked list.

In this exercise, I'm going to cover four sorting algorithms and one search algorithm.

I already introduced you to the "Better String" Library in Exercise 26 when we made devpkg.

Hash maps (hashmaps, hashes, or sometimes dictionaries) are used frequently in dynamic programming languages for storing key/value data.

There are three hash functions that you'll implement in this exercise: FNV-1a: Named after the creators Glenn Fowler, Phong Vo, and Landon Curt Noll, this hash produces good numbers and is reasonably fast.

In this exercise, I'm going to show you a supposedly faster string search algorithm, and compare it to the one that exists in `bstrlib.

The binary tree is the simplest tree-based data structure, and even though it's been replaced by hash maps in many languages, it's still useful for many applications.

You are now ready to tackle a new project called devpkg.

At this point in the book, you should know most of the data structures that are used to build all of the other data structures.

This is a simple algorithm that I use for collecting summary statistics online, or without storing all of the samples.

Ring buffers are incredibly useful when processing asynchronous I/O.

I'm going to use the RingBuffer to create a very simplistic network testing tool called netclient.

The final data structure that I'll show you is called the TSTree, which is similar to the BSTree, except it has three branches: low, equal, and high.

I'm now going to show you how I use the TSTree to do fast URL routing in Web servers that I've written.

We now start the part of the book where you do a long-running, more involved project in a series of exercises.

The next phase of your project is to implement the very first feature of the statserve server.

Once you've solved the problem of the protocol, and putting statistics into a data structure, you'll want to make this much richer.

The next problem to solve is how to store the statistics.

The final exercise consists of three videos.

This book is most likely a monumental undertaking for a beginner programmer, or even a programmer with no experience with many of the topics covered inside.

The manner and timing of static initialization (5.

The following errors were found after printing of the 1st edition of Learn C The Hard Way.