在计算机发展的历，没有哪一种程序设计语言像C语言这样应用广泛。本书是C语言的设计者之一Dennis M.Ritchie和计算机科学家Brian W.Kernighan合著的一本介绍C语言的经典著作。我们现在见到的大量论述C语言程序设计的教材和专著均以此书为蓝本。本书版中介绍的C语言成为后来广泛使用的C语言版本——标准C的基础。人们熟知的“hello,World"程序就是由本书引入的。现在，这一程序已经成为众多程序设计语言入门的课。
第2版根据1987年制定的ANSIC标准做了适当的修订，引入了最新的语言形式，并增加了新的示例。通过简洁的描述、典型的示例，作者全面、系统、准确地讲述了C语言的各个特性以及程序设计的基本方法。对于计算机从业人员来说，本书是一本的程序设计语言方面的参考书。

第2版前言
第1版前言
Introduction
Chapter 1.A Tutorial Introduction
1.1 Getting Started
1.2 Variables and Arithmetic Expressions
1.3 The For Statement
1.4 Symbolic Constants
1.5 Character Input and Output
1.6 Arrays
1.7 Functions
1.8 Arguments-Call aby Value
1.9 Character Arrays
1.10 External Variables and Scope
Chapter 2.Types,Operators,and Expressions
2.1 Variable Names
2.2 Data Types and Sizes
2.3 Constants
2.4 Declarations
2.5 Arithmetic Cperators
2.6 Relational and Logical Operators
2.7 Type Conversions
2.8 Increment and Decrement Operators
2.9 Bitwise Operators
2.10 Assignment Operators and Expressions
2.11 Conditional Expressions
2.12 Precedence and Order of Evaluation
Chapter 3.Control Flow
3.1 Statements and Blocks
3.2 If-Else
3.3 Else-If
3.4 Switch
3.5 Loops-While and For
3.6 Loops-Do-while
3.7 Break and Continue
3.8 Goto and Labels
Chapter 4.Functions and Program Structure
4.1 Basics of Functions
4.2 Functions Returning Non-integers
4.3 External Variables
4.4 Scope Rules
4.5 Header Files
4.6 Static Variables
4.7 Register Variables
4.8 Block Structure
4.9 Initialization
4.10 Recursion
4.11 The C Preprocessor
Chapter 5.Pointers and Arrays
5.1 Pointers and Addresses
5.2 Pointers and Function Arguments
5.3 Pointers and Arrays
5.4 Address Arithmetic
5.5 Character Pointers and Functions
5.6 Pointer Arrays;Pointers to Pointers
5.7 Multi-dimensional Arrays
5.8 Initialization of Pointer Arrays
5.9 Pointers vs Multi-dimensional Arrays
5.10 Command-line Argunents
5.11 Pointers to Functions
5.12 Complicated Declarations
Chapter 6.Structures
6.1 Basics of Structures
6.2 Strucures and Functions
6.3 Arrays of Structures
6.4 Pointers to Structures
6.5 Self-referential Structures
6.6 Table Lookup
6.7 Typedef
6.8 Bit-fields
Chapter 7.Input and Output
7.1 Standard Input and Output
7.2 Formatted Output-Printf
7.3 Variable-length Argument Lists
7.4 Formatted lnput-Scanf
7.5 File Access
7.6 Error Handling--Stderr and Exit
7.7 Line Input and Output
7.8 Miscellaneous Functions
Chapter 8.The UNIX System Interface
8.1 File Descriptors
8.2 Low Level I／O—Read and Write
8.3 Open，Creat，Close，Unlink
8.4 Random Access--Lseek
8.5 Example--An Implementation of Fopen and Getc
8.6 Example--Listing Directories
8.7 Example--A Storage Allocator
Appendix A.Reference Manual
Al Introduction
A2 Lexical Conventions
A3 Syntax Notation
A4 Meaning of Identifiers
A5 ObjectS and Lvalues
A6 Conversions
A7 Expressions
A8 Declarations
A9 Statements
Al0 ExternaI Declarations
All Scope and Linkage
Al2 Preprocessing
A13 Grammar
Appendix B.Standard Library
Bl Input and Output：(stdio.h)
B2 Character Class Tcsts：(ctype.h)
B3 String Functions：(string.h)
B4 Mathematieal Functions：(math.h)
B5 Utility Functions：(stdlib.h)
B6 Diagnostics：(assert.h)
B7 Variable Argument Lists：(stdarg_h)
B8 Non-local Jumps：(setjmp.h)
B9 Signals：(signal-h)
B10 Date and Time Functions：(time.h)
B11 Implementation-defined Limits：(limits.h)and(float.h)
Appendix C.Summry of Changes
Index