Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book!
Review: I bought one of the first editions (the Premier Edition) back in 1995 or so, and it has been an excellent guide to learning C. I am now an experienced programmer with a great knowledge in advanced C thanks to this book. I'd recommend it to anyone, as I was a complete beginner when I started and an expert when I finished.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, provided you have a mind! ;)
Review: I don't mean to come off sounding condescending, but those that give this book a lower mark just because they can't compile the source must be complete and utter morons! Yeah, some of the examples I had problems getting to run, but the beauty of this is you're learning the language anyway so it gives you debugging experience. First rule of programming, if it doesn't work the first time, modify it until it does. I've applied the knowledge given in this book to several compilers including Borland C++ 3.1, DJGPP, the GNU Compiler that comes with Linux, and (with a little work) Misosys C on a TRS-80 (that's a '70s machine for all you lacking in your computer history)! Also, one of my friends had no major problems getting things to work with MS-Visual C++ version 6. Another thing, it's helpful if you have a good head on your shoulders and can handle semi-technical writing. Basically if you are new to computers, have no clue what a command line is, can't operate DOS, or only know how to point and click your way around a computer, then get a Programming For Dummies book for you may become confused with this one. All in all I found this book to be a fine introductory text and quite handy as a reference afterwards. I highly recommend this book to anyone serious about getting into computer programming.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book but contains errors
Review: I found the book good but there are a number of editorial mistakes in both the examples and text. Corrected examples are available for download from the publishers web site and I used these to verify the example errors I noted in the book. Also, the index is not as complete as it should be and I added page numbers to the index when I found additional references that were not listed. Given my technical background I have been able to follow the book even with the errors contained in it. Others may not be so fortunate. Consider another book until this edition is fixed.
Rating: 
Summary: Easy and complete
Review: I found the book to be well-written, easy to follow and the examples more or less accurate for most compilers. As an introduction to the C language, the book contains a suprising amount of in-depth material, but it is primarily an introductory course. The accompanying CD contains a pre-assessment and post-assessment test, both of which contained 1 or 2 erroneous answers. Hopefully these errors will be corrected in future editions. Also, the assessment tests were fairly elementary and did not cover all of the material presented in the course. The CD also contains all of the source code used in the text.
Rating:
Summary: A good book for learning C.
Review: I had already learned a good amount of C already, and I bought this book to reinforce it so I could move onto more advanced C topics. This book did exactly that. It is a great book for learning C. I would recommend it to anyone who has the time to read it. It was a very extensive run through of the C programming language. This is ideal for beginners.
Rating:
Summary: I get it now!
Review: I never thought I'd see the day when I was comfortable with C again (having been out of it for almost 10 years), but that day is here and it's arrived because I read this book. It's neither an easy read nor a quick one, but it's well worth the effort. Take the time to go through the examples (with or without a debugger), and do the exercises at the end of each chapter. You won't be sorry!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant book!
Review: I own an earlier version of this book and without it, I would not be able to do many of the things I do today on my computer. This book goes through the C syntax in an easy-to-digest way, and provides useful examples and hints in getting what you want done. I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn the C language.
Rating:
Summary: This book does a great job of teaching C.
Review: I think this book does a great job of teaching the C language. And I am going to be frank about those people who gave it low reviews: They simply lack the necessary pre-requisite knowledge to understand programming. If you don't know what a program is, etc, you are not ready to learn programming. You need to learn the basics of how computers work first. Second, to the person who said "I couldn't get anything to work". Obviously, you were doing something wrong as most of the examples work fine with no modifications on a wide varity of platforms and compilers. Yes I did find some errors in the included code samples. But although I have not yet completed the book, it appears to me that by the time a reader gets to the sample code with errors, they should already have enough knowledge from reading the material to find the errors and fix them. For example, listing 5.5 fails to pass an argument when it calls a function. However, by the time you get to this section of the chapter, if you were paying attention, you should already know enough about functions to see that this program is obviously not going to work unless an argument is passed to the function being called. And you should also already know enough to figure out what argument you need to pass. If you don't catch the problem while entering the code, you should certainly see what the problem is when the compiler generates an error message when you try to build the program. There are also a few programs that although they work under most compilers, would work better under some with a few modifications. I use the Type & Run 2 example, which is a number guessing game. The book uses variable type "int" to store the number you have to guess. Well, my FreeBSD box is a 32bit system instead of a 16 bit system. As such, variable type int is 4 bits long instead of 2 like on DOS compilers. This makes for a number guessing game with over 2 billion possible numbers. A pretty futile number guessing game in my opinion. However, once again by this time, if you are paying attention, you should know the variable type sizes of your system. And you should also be able to figure out a way to fix this program if you were paying attention. It is a simple matter of using a different variable type to store the number you have to guess. By this point in the chapter, you should know how to do this if you were paying attention. All in all, I think this book does a great job, and the few examples that do contain errors or need modifications to work well on particular systems all come after you should already have enough knowledge to fix them.
Rating:
Summary: Decent beginner-level C book
Review: I've used this book as a text for an introductory C course at a local community college. It has the right mix of examples and explanation, and I find it useful as a textbook. It is not quite as well organized for someone who is looking for a reference book; the Kernighan & Ritchie or Harbison & Steele books make for better references. I do find the Aitken book much more readable. The fifth edition corrects many of the compliance issues that were in an earlier edition. In fact, topic coverage is more extensive, and caused me to update some homework/lecture material (my assignment on linked lists was essentially solved in this edition).
Rating:
Summary: ...has its strong and weak points.
Review: In general, I found this book to be very well organized. There is one exception to this rule though: the examples have a lot of room for improvement. However, I don't believe that the bad examples need be a cause of disregard for this book. He does an excellent job of articulating the material, and I had no trouble understanding each topic presented from the first chapter to the last. Beginners would gain the most benefit from reading this book. Some of C's more challenging concepts, such as pointers and linked lists, are given a thorough and lucid explanation. Just a note: You may or may not encounter any problems with the examples in the book; it probably depends on which compiler you are using (I was using Borland Turbo C++ 1.0). Most of the program examples, albeit a tad sloppy (as in lacking good programming form), ran as is, but I had to make some changes to a lot of them in order to initiate their functionality.
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