2004年美国Jolt大奖入围作品。
如果你是个程序员的话，那么你就需要本书。可能导致我们阅读代码的原因是：我们不得不去修复它其中所包含的错误；或是对它进行遍查（inspect）；或者是改善它。我们阅读代码的方式可能和工程师检查机械的方式一样——找出它的工作原理。或者我们阅读代码的目的是对代码进行清理——找出其中可以被重用的部分。阅读代码有着它自身的技巧，并需要我们能够在重要场合对采用何种技术有着判断能力。在这本不可或缺的书中，Diomidis Spinellis使用了超过600个来自现实世界中的例子来向我们展示如何鉴别好的（或坏的）代码：如何去阅读它，从中去找寻什么，以及如何利用这种技巧来提升我们自身编写的代码的品质。记住这个事实：如果我们养成了阅读好代码的习惯，我们就能写出更高品质的代码。

Figures xiii
Tables xix
Foreword xxi
Preface xxv
1 Introduction
1.1 Why and How to Read Code
1.2 How to Read This Book
2 Basic Programming Elements
2.1 A Complete Program
2.2 Functions and Global Variables
2.3 while Loops, Conditions, and Blocks
2.4 switch Statements
2.5 for Loops
2.6 break and continue Statements
2.7 Character and Boolean Expressions
2.8 goto Statements
2.9 Refactoring in the Small
2.10 do Loops and Integer Expressions
2.11 Control Structures Revisited
Further Reading
3 Advanced C Data Types
3.1 Pointers
3.2 Structures
3.3 Unions
3.4 Dynamic Memory Allocation
3.5 typedef Declarations
4 C Data Structures
4.1 Vectors
4.2 Matrices and Tables
4.3 Stacks
4.4 Queues
4.5 Maps
4.6 Sets
4.7 Linked Lists
4.8 Trees
4.9 Graphs
Further Reading
5 Advanced Control Flow
5.1 Recursion
5.2 Exceptions
5.3 Parallelism
5.3.1 Hardware and Software Parallelism
5.3.2 Control Models
5.3.3 Thread Implementations
5.4 Signals
5.5 Nonlocal Jumps
5.6 Macro Substitution
Further Reading
6 Tackling Large Projects
6.1 Design and Implementation Techniques
6.2 Project Organization
6.3 The Build Process and Makefiles
6.4 Configuration
6.5 Revision Control
6.6 Project-Specific Tools
6.7 Testing
Further Reading
7 Coding Standards and Conventions
7.1 File Names and Organization
7.2 Indentation
7.3 Formatting
7.4 Naming Conventions
7.5 Programming Practices
7.6 Process Standards
Further Reading
8 Documentation
8.1 Documentation Types
8.2 Reading Documentation
8.3 Documentation Problems
8.4 Additional Documentation Sources
8.5 Common Open-Source Documentation Formats
Further Reading
9 Architecture
9.1 System Structures
9.2 Control Models
9.3 Element Packaging
9.4 Architecture Reuse
Further Reading
10 Code-Reading Tools
10.1 Regular Expressions
10.2 The Editor as a Code Browser
10.3 Code Searching with grep
10.4 Locating File Differences
10.5 Roll Your Own Tool
10.6 The Compiler as a Code-Reading Tool
10.7 Code Browsers and Beautifiers
10.8 Runtime Tools
10.9 Nonsoftware Tools
Tool Availability and Further Reding
11 A Complete Example
11.1 Overview
11.2 Attack Plan
11.3 Code Reuse
11.4 Testing and Debugging
11.5 Documentation
11.6 Observations
A Outline of the Code Provided
B Source Code Credits
C Referenced Source Files
D Source Code Licenses
D.1 ACE
D.2 Apache
D.3 ArgoUML
D.4 DemoGL
D.5 hsqldb
D.6 NetBSD
D.7 OpenCl
D.8 Perl
D.9 qtchat
D.10 socked
D.11 vcf
D.12 X Window System
E Maxims for Reading Code
Bibliography
Author Index

Diomidis Spinellis 从1985年起，就为许多具有创造性的并获得广泛赞誉的商业及开源项目编写和维护超过了250000行代码，与此同时他与逐步完善了本书中所介绍的技术。他从伦敦大学帝国学院获得了软件工程学科的工程学硕士学位和计算机科学学科的博士学位。现在他是雅典经贸大学管理科学及技术系的助理教授。