Further Reading

In addition to works mentioned at appropriate points in the text, there are a number of resources for readers who want more technical detail than even this book can provide. The international working group on C standardization has an official home page at http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14, with links to the latest version of the C99 standard and current projects of the working group.

For readers who are interested in not only the what and how of C, but also the why, the WG14 site also has a link to the "C99 Rationale": this is a nonnormative but current document that describes some of the motivations and constraints involved in the standardization process. The C89 Rationale is online at http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/rat/title.html. Furthermore, for those who may wonder how C "got to be that way" in the first place, the originator of C, Dennis Ritchie, has an article titled "The Development of the C Language" as well as other historical documents on his Bell Labs web site, http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr.

Readers who want details on floating-point math beyond the scope of C may wish to start with David Goldberg's thorough introduction, "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic," currently available online at http://docs.sun.com/source/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html.