''C Traps and Pitfalls'' is a slim

computer programming Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as ana ...

book by former

AT&T Corporation AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

researcher and programmer

Andrew Koenig Joshua Andrew Koenig (; August 17, 1968 – February 16, 2010) was an American character actor, film director, editor, writer, and human rights activist. He was known for his role as Richard "Boner" Stabone in ''Growing Pains''. Early ...

, its first edition still in print in 2017, which outlines the many ways in which beginners and even sometimes quite experienced C programmers can write poor, malfunctioning and dangerous

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

. It evolved from an earlier technical report, by the same name, published internally at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

. This, in turn was inspired by a prior paper given by Koenig on "PL/I Traps and Pitfalls" at a SHARE conference in 1977. Koenig wrote that this title was inspired by a 1968 science fiction anthology by Robert Sheckley, "The People Trap and other Pitfalls, Snares, Devices and Delusions, as Well as Two Sniggles and a Contrivance".Cf. Koenig
preface to "C Traps and Pitfalls" book

References

* 1989 non-fiction books Computer programming books Software bugs C (programming language) Software anomalies Addison-Wesley books {{compu-book-stub