I almost want to consider this essential reading for 'real C programming.'

The exercises aren't about bad programming practice, they instead are about highlighting common misunderstandings about what certain C phrases actually mean, and how C 's hands-off approach to system internals sometimes bites you.

Some of the hints were frustrating, but mostly because they were stressing the system-dependant nature of portability and lower-level issues. Most of the time, by the second or third hint I had enough clues to figure out what was going on.

I couldn't find source files online, which was disappointing ... not all of the code fragments would have been best attacked via compiler and debugger, but having the opportunity to do so conveniently would have been nice.

There were chapters on portability and concurrency, which make for good primers on underrated but very imporant subjects in general. It's not the book's job to introduce further resources on the subjects, but some explicit emphasis on the importance of the subjects would have been nice (although I suppose you could say that having ful chapters on the subject would imply this.) ( )