Fluent C: Principles, Practices, and Patterns

Expert advice on C programming is hard to find. While much help is available for object-oriented programming languages, there’s surprisingly little for the C language. With this hands-on guide, beginners and experienced C programmers alike will find guidance about design decisions, including how to apply them bit by bit to running code examples when building large-scale programs.

Christopher Preschern, a leading member of the design patterns community, answers questions such as how to structure C programs, cope with error handling, or design flexible interfaces. Whether you’re looking for one particular pattern or an overview of design options for a specific topic, this book shows you how to implement hands-on design knowledge specifically for the C programming language.

You’ll find design patterns for:

• Error handling
• Returning error information
• Memory management
• Returning data from C functions
• Data lifetime and ownership
• Flexible APIs
• Flexible iterator interfaces
• Organizing files in modular programs
• Escaping #ifdef Hell

Christopher Preschern is a leading member of the design patterns community. He actively takes part in the organization of design pattern conferences and in initiatives to improve pattern writing. As a C programmer at the company ABB he gathered and documented hands-on knowledge on how to write industrial strength code. He lectured at the technical university of Graz courses on coding & quality and he holds a PhD in computer science.