Tài liệu Preface to the first edition

C is a general-purpose programming language with features economy of expression, modern
flow control and data structures, and a rich set of operators. C is not a ``very high level''
language, nor a ``big'' one, and is not specialized to any particular area of application. But its
absence of restrictions and its generality make it more convenient and effective for many tasks
than supposedly more powerful languages.
C was originally designed for and implemented on the UNIX operating system on the DEC
PDP-11, by Dennis Ritchie. The operating system, the C compiler, and essentially all UNIX
applications programs (including all of the software used to prepare this book) are written in
C. Production compilers also exist for several other machines, including the IBM System/370,
the Honeywell 6000, and the Interdata 8/32. C is not tied to any particular hardware or system,
however, and it is easy to write programs that will run without change on any machine that
supports C.
This book is meant to help the reader learn how to program in C. It contains a tutorial
introduction to get new users started as soon as possible, separate chapters on each major
feature, and a reference manual. Most of the treatment is based on reading, writing and
revising examples, rather than on mere statements of rules. For the most part, the examples are
complete, real programs rather than isolated fragments. All examples have been tested directly
from the text, which is in machine-readable form. Besides showing how to make effective use
of the language, we have also tried where possible to illustrate useful algorithms and principles
of good style and sound design.