What do you think?
Rate this book
Understanding and Using C Pointers: Core Techniques for Memory Management
Improve your programming through a solid understanding of C pointers and memory management. With this practical book, you’ll learn how pointers provide the mechanism to dynamically manipulate memory, enhance support for data structures, and enable access to hardware. Author Richard Reese shows you how to use pointers with arrays, strings, structures, and functions, using memory models throughout the book. Difficult to master, pointers provide C with much flexibility and power―yet few resources are dedicated to this data type. This comprehensive book has the information you need, whether you’re a beginner or an experienced C or C++ programmer or developer.
223 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2013
69 people are currently reading
329 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 13, 2017
During a C++ class I had, where the book did a fairly bad job of explaining pointers and then diving head first into them, this book made that class doable. It's amazing that in just ~220 pages, Mr. Reese has managed to explain in such a straightforward way, something that has been so difficult for authors and professors to explain for ages. I found myself repeatedly saying "why didn't the textbook just say that?!", I've come to the conclusion that pointers aren't actually that hard, they're just one of those boogymen that people let themselves get too psyched out about (like fractions when you were in 3rd grade). Everyone made them sound like they'd be the toughest thing in the world, the reality is obviously much different.
Despite it's thin size, and that I really have no need for pointers in my current job. If I ever were to need to brush up on pointers again, I would be going straight to this one.
Despite it's thin size, and that I really have no need for pointers in my current job. If I ever were to need to brush up on pointers again, I would be going straight to this one.
November 13, 2015
If you ever found yourself having trouble understanding pointers, and who doesn't? Then this book is for you. It explains pointer in a more clear and concise way than any other thing I've ever seen before.
However this is not a beginning C book, you need to have a good idea of how to program in C first.
However this is not a beginning C book, you need to have a good idea of how to program in C first.
June 26, 2014
Excellent read. For someone who hasn't dealt much with pointers, this book brought me up to speed for all my Arduino work with pointer passing, string concatenations and such.
This book will make a great reference for future work as well.
This book will make a great reference for future work as well.
January 12, 2025
I'm glad I read it. It was helpful. I learned things.
I found the examples were often not great. There were longstanding errata that had not been corrected in the (online) text, which made me confused and took time to figure out. The author introduced some concepts and said "this is the right way", but then didn't use that way in subsequent examples. It just lacked a high polish.
That said, I'm glad I read it, and I would recommend it to somebody in the same boat I was in.
I found the examples were often not great. There were longstanding errata that had not been corrected in the (online) text, which made me confused and took time to figure out. The author introduced some concepts and said "this is the right way", but then didn't use that way in subsequent examples. It just lacked a high polish.
That said, I'm glad I read it, and I would recommend it to somebody in the same boat I was in.
March 25, 2021
It was a good book much better than the last two about pointers which I've read. It also has brief explanations on pthreads and how to implement inheritance and polymorphic behavior in C much like C++ does.
February 28, 2024
This is an excellent book that provides great advice to both beginners and long-time C programmers. The text is very approachable, working its way all the way from the ground up.
I wish it spent more time on the final subjects, which ultimately make the most elaborate use of pointers that the author presents. But nonetheless, an invaluable book.
Despite all the language wars happening in the 21st century, one has to acknowledge the simplicity of the C language. While you can build arbitrarily complex things in C (e.g.: concepts from object-oriented programming), you won't need a PhD to understand it---in fact, a form of inheritance is clearly covered in 10-ish pages. It greatly helps if you already did some related programming, but still, the author concisely covers the topics in a way that you can apply them right away.
I wish it spent more time on the final subjects, which ultimately make the most elaborate use of pointers that the author presents. But nonetheless, an invaluable book.
Despite all the language wars happening in the 21st century, one has to acknowledge the simplicity of the C language. While you can build arbitrarily complex things in C (e.g.: concepts from object-oriented programming), you won't need a PhD to understand it---in fact, a form of inheritance is clearly covered in 10-ish pages. It greatly helps if you already did some related programming, but still, the author concisely covers the topics in a way that you can apply them right away.
February 6, 2022
A very good book about how to use pointers correctly in many situations also talking about some security issues and how to avoid them, highly recommended
June 18, 2018
it was an amazing book, it cover pointers from different aspect, highly recommended to who wanna understand how things work underneath and pointers.
as we know pointers are dangerous and hard to debug it, so before start working with it , at least read chapter 7 which covers Security Issues and the Improper Use of
Pointers and chapter 8 which cover castings pointers and Aliasing. and it's better to read the whole book it only 200 page.
as we know pointers are dangerous and hard to debug it, so before start working with it , at least read chapter 7 which covers Security Issues and the Improper Use of
Pointers and chapter 8 which cover castings pointers and Aliasing. and it's better to read the whole book it only 200 page.
February 16, 2018
الكتاب كان رآئع بالنسبالى
انصح اى حد عايز يفهم موضوع المؤشرات بشكل افضل انه يقرأ الكتاب دا
اتكلمت بشكل مفصل اكتر عن تجربتى مع الكتاب على
انصح اى حد عايز يفهم موضوع المؤشرات بشكل افضل انه يقرأ الكتاب دا
اتكلمت بشكل مفصل اكتر عن تجربتى مع الكتاب على
January 20, 2023
this book don't talk about just Pointer but with this book you will learn More about Memory And How for and beginner i want to tell him you can take this book as a good reference for you study in C Programming
August 1, 2018
Nothing new. Little information about pointers to function. I think it's most interesting part of book, but there are only few paragraphs.
June 3, 2020
No one really covers this stuff elsewhere. Enough detail to learn will and will work as a reference book.
May 9, 2021
Not a good book to study pointers from. In some chapters the text is misleading. Generally a chaotic book. At first it seems nice, but it the end it leaves a lot to be desired. Not recommending it.
May 27, 2022
If you want to go deep on C pointers. This is the way.
November 3, 2022
I can absolutely say I feel more confident about some of the more advanced usages of pointers (function pointer tables, 'gotchas' with aliasing, etc.)
December 16, 2022
Good book for beginners
February 19, 2014
A good read, collecting and presenting a lot of useful information on the care and usage of pointers in C. After reading this book, you should be able to understand what C pointers are, how to declare and use them and how to make sure you don't abuse pointers and introduce security issues into your code.
Starting with basic pointer declaration and usage, the book moves on to intermediate usage of pointers like dynamic allocation of memory, pointers to functions and arrays and usage of pointers in structures. Finally, the book covers advanced usage of pointers to create linked lists and how to do introduce object-oriented like-features into your code.
Most of the early material in the book is already familiar to me, but it was refreshing to see that how I used pointers was mostly already correct, with a few gotchas and tips to be filed away for future reference.
A worth-while read for those new to pointers in C and for those who are already familiar with pointer usage but would like to verify that their pointer usage techniques are correct as well as to learn more advanced pointer usage.
Note that the book assumes you are already familiar with C.
Starting with basic pointer declaration and usage, the book moves on to intermediate usage of pointers like dynamic allocation of memory, pointers to functions and arrays and usage of pointers in structures. Finally, the book covers advanced usage of pointers to create linked lists and how to do introduce object-oriented like-features into your code.
Most of the early material in the book is already familiar to me, but it was refreshing to see that how I used pointers was mostly already correct, with a few gotchas and tips to be filed away for future reference.
A worth-while read for those new to pointers in C and for those who are already familiar with pointer usage but would like to verify that their pointer usage techniques are correct as well as to learn more advanced pointer usage.
Note that the book assumes you are already familiar with C.
October 22, 2020
A must-read for C programmers who haven't mastered pointers and memory management. It's also a pretty good refresher book.
The book starts with the basics of pointers and moves on to explain the differences between the heap and stack, dynamic memory management, function pointers, pointer arithmetic and arrays, structures and pointers, and improper use of pointers (e.g., dangling pointers, memory leaks, buffer overflows, and so on), which are all topics every C programmer should be comfortable with, unless you don't mind your programs being riddled with bugs, memory leaks, and security vulnerabilities.
The book starts with the basics of pointers and moves on to explain the differences between the heap and stack, dynamic memory management, function pointers, pointer arithmetic and arrays, structures and pointers, and improper use of pointers (e.g., dangling pointers, memory leaks, buffer overflows, and so on), which are all topics every C programmer should be comfortable with, unless you don't mind your programs being riddled with bugs, memory leaks, and security vulnerabilities.
September 30, 2016
Excelente libro incluso para quienes están empezando con C, explica de una manera didáctica el "coco" de los desarrolladores de alto nivel. Sólo me gustaría que la versión eBook tuviera los ejemplos de código mejor maquetados, son ilegibles en Kindle.
February 3, 2014
There was not much new in it for me, but if you want to know more about pointers than the average C book covers, it is a great read.
June 9, 2016
Porywająca fabuła
November 19, 2020
Great refresher on many of the finer details of pointers.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.