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    The C standard is a very dense and heavy text. A beginner has no chance of understanding it. Commented May 19, 2018 at 15:22
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    @NieDzejkob: The terminology used by compilers--which seems to be what the question is about--is derived from the Standard. While you're correct that parts of the Standard are incomprehensible (in part because it's designed by committee, and the authors don't seem to have a consistent understanding of what parts of it are supposed to mean), but anyone wanting to understand what terms like "lvalue" mean should be aware of where they came from. Further, if one wants to understand why something like x=0x1e-x yields an error, I really don't know anything other than the Standard... Commented May 19, 2018 at 15:53
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    I agree with @NieDzejkob: The C standard is not the kind of text you want to confront a newbie with. Newbies need positive hands-on experiences fast. And they need to learn new things one by one as they pop up. Reading a standard or rationale takes way too much time while completely overloading a newbie with information. Commented May 19, 2018 at 22:15
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    @cmaster: I started with the C89 Standard ages ago, and it wasn't too bad even in the days before browsers with a handy 'find text' feature. I'll grant that later standards have gotten worse and worse. While nobody should rely upon the Standard as a sole reference, it's important to recognize the divergence between the folk wisdom about how microcomputer compilers behave, and the ways that the Standard permits low-quality behaviors to behave, so one will be prepared if one has to deal with the latter. Commented May 19, 2018 at 23:15
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    @cmaster: In any case, someone who is programming C should be aware of the Standard, and know how to consult it when needed, even if they're not going to try to read the whole thing. If one does a web search for a standard library function, for example, one may find a reference that describes one implementation's behavior in some corner cases without mentioning that, from the Standard's point of view, those corner cases invoke Undefined Behavior and other implementations might not work the same way. If one instead searches the Standard, one can avoid that problem. Commented May 19, 2018 at 23:25