The C Programming Language - Influence

Influence

The C Programming Language has often been cited as a model for technical writing, due to the book's clear presentation and concise treatment. In just 228 pages (272 pages in the second edition), the book covers C comprehensively. Examples generally consist of complete programs of the type one is likely to encounter in daily usage of the language, with an emphasis on system programming. The technical details of C are balanced by the authors' observations on good programming practice, which are immediately illustrated with concrete, realistic examples. As the authors write in the preface to the second edition:

We have tried to retain the brevity of the first edition. C is not a big language, and it is not well served by a big book. We have improved the exposition of critical features, such as pointers, that are central to C programming. We have refined the original examples, and have added new examples in several chapters. For instance, the treatment of complicated declarations is augmented by programs that convert declarations into words and vice versa. As before, all examples have been tested directly from the text, which is in machine-readable form.

Perhaps the most famous example program from the book is its "hello, world" program, which just prints out the text "hello, world" to the terminal, as an illustration of a minimal working C program. Numerous texts since then have followed that convention for introducing a programming language.

Before the advent of ANSI C, the first edition of the text served as the de facto standard of the language for writers of C compilers. With the standardization of ANSI C, the authors more consciously geared the second edition toward programmers rather than compiler writers; in the authors' own words (again in the preface to the second edition):

Appendix A, the reference manual, is not the standard, but our attempt to convey the essentials of the standard in a smaller space. It is meant for easy comprehension by programmers, but not as a definition for compiler writers—that role properly belongs to the standard itself. Appendix B is a summary of the facilities of the standard library. It too is meant for reference by programmers, not implementers. Appendix C is a concise summary of the changes from the original version.

The influence of The C Programming Language on programmers, a generation of whom first worked with C in universities and industry, has led many to accept the authors' programming style and conventions as recommended practice, if not normative practice. For example, the coding and formatting style of the programs presented in both editions of the book is often referred to as "K&R style" or the "One True Brace Style" and, significantly, became the coding style used by convention in the source code for the Unix and Linux kernels.