Online C reference manuals

Question

I've studied C programming in college some years ago and have developed some medium applications back then (nothing serious). Now I have to develop some more 'advanced' C applications (involving POSIX threads and RPC), but right now I'm a little rusty even with the basics.

Can anyone recommend me good online C reference manuals? This may help me get in tune faster.

acrosman · Answer 1 · 2008-10-12T02:01:57.130

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For the very basic I found this reference card very useful. Doesn't help with more advanced functions but it can help get the rust off.

edited Oct 12 '08 at 02:01

answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:28

acrosman

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It did help a lot as a quick reference while programming. Thanks! – mmutilva Oct 14 '08 at 12:06

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 15 '09 at 00:58

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~~C standard library reference (both C89 and C99)~~
C89 library reference guide
GNU C tutorial (more than just a tutorial, quite a useful reference)

I got these all from a previous similar question on SO. I would like to credit the original posters, but unfortunately cannot seem to find that question.

edited Jul 15 '09 at 00:58

Frank V

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answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:28

Dan Lenski

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That first link is dead. – Frank V Jul 15 '09 at 00:56
Second link died a while ago, too. :( – MRA Jun 30 '15 at 12:24

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:35

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It's not online, but hands down the best C reference is Harbison & Steele (yeah - it's better than K&R).

You can get the 4th edition for basically shipping (I don't know what improvements were made in the 5th ed.):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0133262243

answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:35

Michael Burr

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Can you qualify "better" than K&R? – JR Lawhorne Jun 19 '09 at 16:51
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Well, it's just an opinion (and it's been a while since I've even looked at K&R), but it's comprehensive, clear, covers all the variants - pre-standard, standard, Unix, and even a bit of information on differences between C & C++. From my recollection, K&R is more of a tutorial than a reference. – Michael Burr Jun 19 '09 at 19:41
@MichaelBurr: The fifth edition can be found online [here](https://savedparadigms.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/harbison-s-p-steele-g-l-c-a-reference-manual-5th-ed.pdf). – Noob Saibot Dec 21 '14 at 03:16

score 4 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 14 '08 at 21:25

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Don't forget man pages. If you are developing on any UNIX-derived platform (Linux, BSD, Cygwin) you can almost always do something like man printf or info printf to get documentation for any library function.

answered Oct 14 '08 at 21:25

Frank Szczerba

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Make sure you do `man 3 printf` - that one always trips me up. – Chris Lutz Jul 15 '09 at 01:10

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:29

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The best C reference by far is Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" in it's dead tree form. It's compact and complete.

For an online reference, you might try Brian Kernighan's Programming in C Tutorial.

answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:29

JR Lawhorne

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score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:31

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manuals

tutorial

answered Oct 10 '08 at 03:31

Arle Nadja

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The microsoft's link is for C++ not C! – Taha Jahangir Jun 03 '11 at 13:54
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This one looks like C. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fw5abdx6.aspx – Arle Nadja Jun 04 '11 at 15:10

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 10 '08 at 08:47

the C book is freely available on-line. It is not really a reference manual, but still a pretty good resource. From the website:

This is the online version of The C Book, second edition by Mike Banahan, Declan Brady and Mark Doran, originally published by Addison Wesley in 1991. This version is made freely available.

While this book is no longer in print, its content is still very relevant today. The C language is still popular, particularly for open source software and embedded programming. We hope this book will be useful, or at least interesting, to people who use C.

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 13 '08 at 09:38

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The best online reference for C and C++ is probably www.cplusplus.com

QuantumPete

answered Oct 13 '08 at 09:38

Peter Kühne

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 12 '08 at 14:18

I would recommend reading through the comp.lang.c FAQ at least once to help get the rust off. For reference material, you might want to grab a copy of the C Standard, the latest version of C99 with TC3 included is available for free here, for C89 the last draft version is available as a text file or you can pick up a copy of the The Annotated ANSI C Standard for a few bucks and have a hard copy of the actual standard (just ignore the "annotations" on the right-hand pages). Since you are using POSIX you might want to become more familiar with the Single Unix Specification which includes the Standard C library as well as the POSIX functions, you can read/download SUSv3 at the Open Group (registration required but free and quick).

For an offline resource I would also recommend C: A Reference Manual (5th Edition) by Harbison & Steele, it thoroughly covers every language feature and standard function of C and documents differences between the various standard versions.

Online C reference manuals

9 Answers9