{Resolved} Does anyone know a good online tutorial for C?

[sciguyryan]

Hi everyone.

I've decided to learn C and I'm looking for a good online tutorial (Perferably with samples).

I would also like to know what would be the best compiler to use? I know there are quite a few arround but I want the expert oppinion on which is best for general use

Cheers and thanks for the reply,

RyanJ

[CornedBee]

You can find a tutorial for C++ at the top of this forum. For C, I don't know.

Best compiler - depends. Do you only need the compiler?
On Windows, I recommend either MinGW (GCC for Windows) or Microsoft C. Both are free downloads.

MinGW:
Download: http://www.mingw.org/
C Standard: C99
C++ Standard: C++98
Pro: GCC invocation syntax, can compile many Unix programs, comes with GNU make.
Contra: Using DLLs that were generated by MSC or Borland C (= most of them) or making DLLs that these programs can use is non-trivial. Also, support for COM is spotty.

Microsoft C:
Download: http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/vctoolkit2003/
C Standard: C89
C++ Standard: C++98
Pro: Good interoperability with other Windows stuff, as this is the compiler that compiles Windows itself. Has some extensions that ease usage of various Windows-specific features. Is faster than MinGW and produces faster, smaller code.
Contra: Does not support modern C features such as runtime-sized arrays or the bool datatype. IDE for this compiler is expensive.



If you want to use an IDE (you probably do) there again are two common choices, Visual Studio and Dev-C++.

Dev-C++:
Download: http://www.bloodshed.net/
Compiler: MinGW
Price: Free

Visual Studio:
Download: None
Compiler: MSC
Price: No idea, but a lot.

Again, of the two the MS one is a bit more attuned to Windows programming, and comes with the MFC and ATL windowing libraries. On the other hand, Dev-C++ has an integrated package installer for such things as GTK+, GTK--, wxWindows and many other very useful libraries.

You can find a lot of interesting tools of all kinds on this site:
http://www.devzoo.com//index.php?tooltype=WindowsEditor

[sciguyryan]

Thanks for the information - I will look it over.

Thanks again,

RyanJ

[sciguyryan]

Do you have any information on the lcc-win32 compiler? I've heared thats quite a good one but I want to be shure first

Cheers,

RyanJ

[CornedBee]

I heard that it's quite good, too, but it's a C-only compiler and therefore rather uninteresting to me (I'm more of a C++ guy.)

[sciguyryan]

I heard that it's quite good, too, but it's a C-only compiler and therefore rather uninteresting to me (I'm more of a C++ guy.)

Ok, in that case I will use Dev-C++

Thank you again for your help, I've added to your rep points

CHeers,

RyanJ