thanks for the replies. i think i'm going to buy "C Programming Language : ANSI C Version, by Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie".

i wonder why anyone would want to write non-standard code.

i've been reading a lot of the posts here to help me learn C. the problem is, much of the code is written for other compilers (i use gcc). i didn't know there was compiler-specific code until i...

books are expensive.

here's some more info on it:
http://www-numi.fnal.gov/offline_software/srt_public_context/WebDocs/Companion/cxx_crib/member_selection.html

not from my experience. every time i buy a programming book, it ends up sitting on the shelf while i find the best documentation online.