> The only caveat here is that most of the examples are written in C, which ...

losvedir · on Aug 23, 2011

I bought this book on Yegge's recommendation as well, and this actually was a stumbling block for me at first.

"Whyyy is this variable, ★★p a pointer to a pointer?! p is never referenced in the function, so why are we two levels of indirection down?!" I didn't realize at the time that pointers are copied by value in C, so in order to modify the pointer you need to give the function a pointer to it.

I guess it was worthwhile, though, because it encouraged me to play around with C[1] a bit in order to grok it.

P.S. Sorry for those stupid stars, HN kept eating my highlights. Any way to avoid that?

[1]https://gist.github.com/661564

michaelcampbell · on Aug 23, 2011

Indent your "code" with a few spaces.

    int **p; /* I used 4 spaces in front of "int" */

losvedir · on Aug 23, 2011

Ah, thanks. I was hoping there was an inline way, but I guess this will have to do.

tedunangst · on Aug 23, 2011

um, why? It seems perfectly reasonable to me that examples written in C could be troublesome to someone who doesn't know C.

ntoshev · on Aug 23, 2011

I don't think anyone can forget pointers though, except in Winnie the Pooh way.

Also, anyone learning data structures should know pointers or at least references as a prerequisite. You can't reason about efficiency in data structures knowing only the high level comfort of Python.

pbreit · on Aug 23, 2011

I think it's a reasonable caveat and don't find its inclusion undermining the OPs main thrust.