Beej’s Guide to C Programming (pdf)

Foreword

No point in wasting words here, folks, let’s jump straight into the C code:

    E((ck?main((z?(stat(M,&t)?P+=a+'{'?0:3:
    execv(M,k),a=G,i=P,y=G&255,
    sprintf(Q,y/'@'-3?A(*L(V(%d+%d)+%d,0)

And they lived happily ever after. The End.

What’s this? You say something’s still not clear about this whole C programming language thing?

Well, to be quite honest, I’m not even sure what the above code does. It’s a snippet from one of the entries in the 2001 International Obfuscated C Code Contest1, a wonderful competition wherein the entrants attempt to write the most unreadable C code possible, with often surprising results.

The bad news is that if you’re a beginner in this whole thing, all C code you see probably looks obfuscated! The good news is, it’s not going to be that way for long.

What we’ll try to do over the course of this guide is lead you from complete and utter sheer lost confusion on to the sort of enlightened bliss that can only be obtained though pure C programming. Right on…

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Ah, Beej’s guide. Brings back fond memories when I was struggling to learn network programming.

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