Let UsC
Fifth Edition
Yashavant P. Kanetkar
Dedicated to baba
Who couldn’t be here to see this day...
About the Author
Destiny drew Yashavant Kanetkar towards computers when the IT industry was just making a beginning in India. Having completed his education from VJTI Mumbai and IIT Kanpur in Mechanical Engineering he started his training company in Nagpur.
Yashavant has a passion for writing and is an author of several books in C, C++, VC++, C#, .NET, DirectX and COM programming. He is a much sought after speaker on various technology subjects and is a regular columnist for Express Computers and Developer 2.0. His current affiliations include being a Director of KICIT, a training company and DCube Software Technologies, a software development company. In recognition to his contribution Microsoft awarded him the prestigious “Best .NET Technical Contributor” award recently. He can be reached at kanetkar@kicit.com.
Acknowledgments
It has been a journey of almost a decade from the stage the book idea of “Let Us C” was conceived up to the release of this Fifth Edition. During this journey I have met so many students, developers, professors, publishers and authors who expressed their opinions about Let Us C. They have been the main motivators in my effort to continuously improve this book.
In particular I am indebted to Manish Jain who had a faith in this book idea, believed in my writing ability, whispered the words of encouragement and made helpful suggestions from time to time.
The five editions of this book saw several changes and facelifts. During this course people like Ajay Joshi, Amol Tambat, Ajay Daga, Nandita Shastri, Mrunal Khandekar and Rahul Bedge helped in writing programs, spotting bugs, drawing figures and preparing index. I trust that with their collective acumen all the programs would run correctly in all situations.
Anup Das, my colleague has a lot of influence on this Fifth Edition. He helped my clarify my thoughts and pointing me in the direction of Windows and Linux. He sincerely wanted this edition to offer “C, in today’s perspective”. I am hopeful that his dream has been realized.
I thank Seema, my wife, for her friendship and for her contributions in everything that I do in IT in ways more than she could ever guess. Though she is a Gynecologist by profession she has the uncanny ability to come up with suggestions that make me feel “Oh, why didn’t it occur to me”.
And finally my heartfelt gratitude to the countless students who made me look into every nook and cranny of C. I would forever remain indebted to them..
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Preface to the Fifth Edition
It is mid 2004. World has left behind the DOTCOM bust, 9/11 tragedy, the economic downturn, etc. and moved on. Countless Indians have relentlessly worked for close to two decades to successfully establish “India” as a software brand. At times I take secret pleasure in seeing that a book that I have been part of, has contributed in its own little way in shaping so many budding careers that have made the “India” brand acceptable.
Computing and the way people use C for doing it keeps changing as years go by. So overwhelming has been the response to all the previous editions of “Let Us C” that I have now decided that each year I would come up with a new edition of it so that I can keep the readers abreast with the way C is being used at that point in time.
There are two phases in every C programmer’s life. In the first phase he is a learner trying to understand the language elements and their nuances. At this stage he wants a simple learning environment that helps him to master the language. In my opinion, even today there isn’t any learning environment that can beat Turbo C/C++ for simplicity. Hence the first fifteen chapters are written keeping this environment in mind, though a majority of these programs in these chapters would work with any C compiler.
