This section is intended to provide reference on the C language. It assumes that you have some programming experience with a high level language such as VB, Perl, Java, Python, or 3D app scripting languages like LScript, MaxScript or MEL.

I won’t attempt to teach you C as it is way beyond the scope of this manual as well as beyond the scope of my ability. What I will do however is try to present as clearly and concisely as possible some of the aspects of C that will likely be unfamiliar.

I will also try to present the topics as they relate to messiah’s SDK, often citing code generated by messiah:develop. Other times when this isn’t possible I will try to present the ideas in terms of 3D programming.

Many of the statements and definitions will be greatly over-simplified but will be enough to serve our purpose here. If you want a more complete education on the subject please see the recommended reading section.

This section will cover:

• Data Types

• Pointers
• Strings
• Structures
• Unions
• Typecasting
• Function Pointers or Callbacks
• Bit fields
• Polymorphism
• Further Reading

This section will not cover:

• Control structures (e.g. if, for, while etc )

• The concept of functions or modular programming.
• A whole bunch of other stuff, use this to help you get started but buy a few books on the subject as well.

These topics are assumed to be known by the reader.