From C to Zig

A practical Zig 0.16.0 tutorial for C programmers.

Each chapter starts with a small C example, then shows the Zig version and the main differences.

Requirements

• Zig 0.16.0
• A C compiler (gcc or clang)
• Python 3.10+ for the optional snippet validator

Chapters

• 01 Hello World
• 02 Variables and Types
• 03 Operators
• 04 Control Flow
• 05 Functions
• 06 Arrays
• 07 Structs
• 08 Enums
• 09 Unions
• 10 Strings
• 11 Slices
• 12 Optionals
• 13 Pointers
• 14 Memory
• 15 Errors
• 16 Defer
• 17 Testing
• 18 Comptime
• 19 Generics
• 20 Builtins
• 21 Anytype
• 22 Formatting
• 23 File I/O
• 24 Collections
• 25 Threads
• 26 FFI
• 27 Build System
• 28 Build Modes
• 29 Sorting and Searching
• 30 Hashing and Patterns
• 31 Project: CLI Tool
• 32 Project: Server
• 33 Project: Game

Projects

• projects/wc - word-count command-line tool
• projects/httpd - small HTTP server
• projects/snake - Snake game using raylib-zig

Validate

python3 validator/validator.py chapters/ --compile-only

Project checks:

cd projects/wc && zig build test
cd ../httpd && zig build && zig build test
cd ../snake && zig build

License

This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0.