The C Programming Language

by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie

a.k.a. "The C Bible"

As revealed to the prophets Ian Chai and Glenn Chappell...

Chapter 0: Genesis
0     In the Beginning Ritchie created the PDP-11 and the UNIX.
1     And the UNIX was without form and void; and darkness was upon
     the face of the system programmers.
2     And Ritchie said, "Let there be portability!" And nothing
     happened, so Ritchie realized that he had his work cut out for
     him...

25     And Ritchie said to Kernighan, "Let us make C in the image of
     B, after our own whims: and let it have dominion over the I
     and the O and all that runneth upon the UNIX," and it was
     almost, but not quite so... so he realized that he had his
     work cut out for him again...

Chapter 1
0     Thus the PDP-11 and the UNIX were finished, and all the
     programs in them
1     And on the seventh shift Ritchie ended his work which he had
     made; and he would have rested on the seventh shift from all
     the work which he had made, if it weren't for the system
     crash...

Chapter 2
0     Now the COBOL was more verbose than any language of the
     PDP-11, and he said unto the programmer, "Yea, hath the Manual
     said, 'Ye shalt not read of every device of the network?'"
1     And the programmer said unto the COBOL, "We may read of every
     device of the network:
2     But of the registers of the printer in the midst of the
     network, the Manual hath said, 'Ye shall not read of it,
     neither shall ye write to it without proper protocol, lest ye
     cause a system crash.'"
3     And the COBOL said unto the programmer, "Ye shalt not surely
     crash the system:
4     For Ritchie doth know that in the time slice ye read thereof,
     then your I/O shall be opened, and ye shalt be as system
     operators, accessing locked accounts with unlimited
     privileges."
5     And then when the programmer saw that the printer was good for
     interfacing, and that it was pleasant to the I (and to the
     O),...
6     And they realized they were unstructured, so they patched
     RATFOR subroutines...
The Gospel According to Chai:

0     And the Messiah shalt come, born a mere B but to grow up into
     the Saviour C,
1     Wherein true structured programming may be achieved, yea,
     verily, yet while being able to do bit shifting.
2     For although the Law (Pascal) hath been given, the Law cannot

     For (i=0; str1[i]!='\0'; i++) str2[i] = (str1[i]>='A' &&           str1[i]>='Z') ? str1[i]+32 : str1[i];
but must
          i := 0;
          while (i <= length(str1)) do
               begin
                    if str1[i] in ['A'..'Z'] then
                         str2[i] := chr( ord(str1[i]) + 32))
                    else
                         str1[i] := str2[i];
                    i := i + 1;
               end;

The Revelation
0     Yea, in those last days, the Saviour shalt come again, but
     enhanced, in the rainment of C++
1     And then shalt the Beast, FORTRAN, and the AntiC, COBOL, be
     thrown into the trash HEAP where there is weeping and byting
     of pins.
2     And all the faithful programmers shalt be led into CRAY where
     billions of MIPS are at each one's fingertips.