There are C interpreters out there. I learned C with one of them. It was limited but very useful to get the hang of C. Plus the code could be re-used into a proper C compiler afterwards.

As for bad documentation, I don't know the current state of affairs but Borland was very clear back then when I learned. One click and the function was explained, with examples that could be copy/pasted.
While Microsoft Visual C's help was a total nightmare, very unintuitive.