With the same insight and authority that made their book The Unix Programming Environment a classic, Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike have written The Practice of Programming to help make individual programmers more effective and productive.

The practice of programming is more than just writing code. Programmers must also assess tradeoffs, choose among design alternatives, debug and test, improve performance, and maintain software written by themselves and others. At the same time, they must be concerned with issues like compatibility, robustness, and reliability, while meeting specifications.

The Practice of Programming covers all these topics, and more. This book is full of practical advice and real-world examples in C, C++, Java, and a variety of special-purpose languages. It includes chapters on:

• debugging: finding bugs quickly and methodically
• testing: guaranteeing that software works correctly and reliably
• performance: making programs faster and more compact
• portability: ensuring that programs run everywhere without change
• design: balancing goals and constraints to decide which algorithms and data structures are best
• interfaces: using abstraction and information hiding to control the interactions between components
• style: writing code that works well and is a pleasure to read
• notation: choosing languages and tools that let the machine do more of the work

Kernighan and Pike have distilled years of experience writing programs, teaching, and working with other programmers to create this book. Anyone who writes software will profit from the principles and guidance in The Practice of Programming.

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Offers practical advice and examples on programming in C, C++, Java, and a variety of special-purpose languages, with chapters on debugging, testing, performance, portability, design, interfaces, style, notation, and other topics. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews@booknews.com)

"An outstanding book... a readable and well-written style combined with their experience and valuable expertise" - Sys Admin

Rating 9/10: "Practical and enjoyable, this book captures its authors' considerable wisdom and experience" - Slashdot.org

"This book is full of good common sense. In addition it is written in highly readable English. Pick up a copy, choose any chapter and start reading. I think you will then feel motivated to buy yourself a copy... Whatever language you program in, I think you will benefit from reading this book." — Association of C & C++ Users

"A great candidate to fill this widely perceived lack in the literature... Very solid and very educational, this manual is one I highly recommend to all programmers" - Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

This book was written primarily for anyone who wants to hone their programming skills: students who have taken a programming course or two; professional programmers using C, C++, or Java; software development managers; and anyone else who cares about programming. That said, the generation of programmers who learned C from "K&R" and Unix from "K&P" will want to check out the advice offered from the people who wrote the book.

The authors draw on their experience to help programmers be more proficient and productive. They discuss topics like good style, design, performance improvement, testing, debugging, and portability - in summary, how to write good programs.

This book was written primarily for anyone who wants to hone their programming skills: students who have taken a programming course or two; professional programmers using C, C++, or Java; software development managers; and anyone else who cares about programming. That said, the generation of programmers who learned C from "K&R" and Unix from "K&P" will want to check out the advice offered from the people who wrote the book.

Brian W. Kernighan works in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He is Consulting Editor for Addison-Wesley's Professional Computing Series and the author, with Dennis Ritchie, of The C Programming Language. Rob Pike works in the Computing Science Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies. He was a lead architect and implementer of the Plan 9 and Inferno operating systems. His research focuses on software that makes it easier for people to write software.

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1. Style.

2. Algorithms and Data Structures.

3. Design and Implementation.

4. Interfaces.

5. Debugging.

6. Testing.

7. Performance.

8. Portability.

9. Notation.

Epilogue.

Appendix: Collected Rules.

Index. 020161586XT04062001