Product Description

Bestselling UNIX author W. Richard Stevens offers application developers and system programmers his professional, experience-based guidance on using the system call interface with C. In the first half of the book, Stevens describes more than 200 system calls and functions with a brief example program following each description. Having provided the basics, Stevens moves on to chapter-long examples. The book is applicable to all major UNIX releases, especially System V Release 4-including Solaris 2-and 4.4 BSD, including 386 BSD.

From the Publisher

A tutorial that you just shouldn't be without

If you are an experienced C programmer with a working knowledge of UNIX, you cannot afford to be without this up-to-date tutorial on the system call interface and the most important functions found in the ANSI C library. Rich Stevens describes more than 200 system calls and functions; since he believes the best way to learn code is to read code, a brief example accompanies each description.

Building upon information presented in the first 15 chapters, the author offers chapter-long examples teaching you how to create a database library, a PostScript printer driver, a modem dialer, and a program that runs other programs under a pseudo terminal. To make your analysis and understanding of this code even easier, and to allow you to modify it, all of the code in the book is available via UUNET.

A 20-page appendix provides detailed function prototypes for all the UNIX, POSIX, and ANSI C functions that are described in the book, and lists the page on which each prototype function is described in detail. Additional tables throughout the text and a thorough index make Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment an invaluable reference tool that all UNIX programmers - beginners to experts - will want on their bookshelves.

Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment is applicable to all major UNIX releases, especially System V Release 4 and the latest release of 4.3BSD, including 386BSD. These real-world implementations allow you to more clearly understand the status of the current and future standards, including IEEE POSIX and XPG3.