C Primer Plus, Fourth Edition

Key Concepts

C provides several models for managing memory. You should become familiar with the various choices. You also need to develop a sense of when to choose the various types. Most of the time, the automatic variable is the best choice. If you decide to use another type, you should have a good reason. For communicating between functions, it's usually better to use automatic variables, function parameters, and return values rather than global variables. On the other hand, global variables are particularly useful for constant data.

You should try to understand the properties of static memory, automatic memory, and allocated memory. In particular, be aware that the amount of static memory used is determined at compile time, and that static ...