Are there any plugins for visual studio (any version) or any other ide that can show you the standard library function prototypes and their (examples) , return etc for the standard c library... much like the java code helper found in eclipse if I am not mistaken (I am not a java developer but I think I saw something similar to what I described).
note: I know I can use google or msdn but I am asking about other alternatives.
Visual Assist X is by far the best C/C++ improvement for Visual Studio.
Edit in response to userHel's comment:
I'll give it a shot. but how come nobody came up with a free version
Probably because it's really hard to do well. You practically need an entire compiler just to parse C++ sufficiently to give the kinds of features VA-X does. At the other end of the stack, you would also need an almost flawless integration with Visual Studio. Just imagine what's in between...
This is where firstborn selling comes in...
KDevelop4 has good C++ analysis support which is constantly improving, including features which I think were inspired by VAX. I haven't used VAX so I can't comment on feature parity, but it has all the C++ features I need. Of note is the tooltip when holding the mouse over an identifier, which gives type info as well as links to the definition (and declaration if available).
For linux development, the man pages are excellent. I'd like to know of something similar for Windows.