The C Programming Language (2nd Edition)

A "must-have" reference for every serious programmer’s digital library

The C Programming Language (2nd Ed.) is one of the best-selling programming books published in the last fifty years, "K&R" has been called everything from the "bible" to "a landmark in computer science" and it has influenced generations of programmers. This concise and beautifully written text is a "must-have" reference for every serious programmer’s digital library. As modestly described by the authors in the Preface to the First Edition, this "is not an introductory programming manual; it assumes some familiarity with basic programming concepts like variables, assignment statements, loops, and functions. Nonetheless, a novice programmer should be able to read along and pick up the language, although access to a more knowledgeable colleague will help."

About the Author

Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, commonly known by his username dmr, was an American computer scientist who "helped shape the digital era." He created the C programming language and, with long-time colleague, Ken Thompson, the UNIX operating system. Ritchie and Thompson received the Turing Award from the ACM in 1983, the Hamming Medal from the IEEE in 1990 and the National Medal of Technology from President Clinton in 1999. Ritchie was the head of Lucent Technologies System Software Research Department when he retired in 2007. The 'R' of the K&R C book stands for his name. Ritchie was best known as the creator of the C programming language, a key developer of the UNIX operating system, and co-author of The C Programming Language, commonly referred to as K&R (in reference to the authors Kernighan and Ritchie). Ritchie worked together with Ken Thompson, the scientist credited with writing the original Unix; one of Ritchie's most important contributions to Unix was its porting to different machines and platforms. The C language is widely used today in application, operating system, and embedded system development, and its influence is seen in most modern programming languages. UNIX has also been influential, establishing concepts and principles that are now precepts of computing. Ritchie was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1988 for "development of the "C" programming language and for co-development of the UNIX operating system.

Brian Kernighan received his BASc from the University of Toronto in 1964 and a PhD in electrical engineering from Princeton in1969. He was a member of the Computing Science Research center at Bell Labs until 2000, and is now a professor in the Computer Science Department at Princeton. He was a co-creator of several programming languages, including AWK, AMPL, and a number of tools for document preparation.  He is the co-author of 10 books and some technical papers, and holds 4 patents. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2002 and voted into Electronic Design's Engineering Hall of Fame in 2013. His research areas include programming languages and tools that make computers easier to use, often for non-specialist users. He is also interested in technology.