Intended for the Pascal or BASIC PC programmer, this introductory book is specifically designed for the Turbo C environment; many of the earlier chapters contain extensive coverage of the Turbo C environment in addition to the C material covered. All example code is provided on a 5.25-inch diskette included with the book. The book covers most of the features of Turbo C, but some more advanced C features, such as typedefs, pointers to functions, and unions, are not covered. (Turbo C is not fully ANSI C compliant, but contains many features of ANSI C.)

The book introduces topics informally, comparing and contrasting C structures with similar structures in Pascal or BASIC. Philosophical directions in C are often described with the help of famous quotations. This approach gives the book an informal feel. Although this informality is an asset in an introduction, the lack of formalism and attention to the finer details of the language make the book unsuitable as a language reference. The lack of a complete description of the language, coupled with a number of errors in detail, weakens the book (for example, the author disparages the use of scanf because it does not detect errors in the input, but scanf does detect errors in scanning). An additional C reference that formally defined the syntax and library functions would be required if the book were to be used either as a classroom textbook or for self-study.