Advanced UNIX Programming

In this book, Marc J. Rochkind explains clearly and systematically how to program UNIX at the system call level. It is his aim tp help any experienced programmer learn system calls easily and use them wisely and portably. Based on his own experiences, he shows why and when they are used.

He gives lot of practical advice, illustrated with over 3,000 lines of example programs.

The author treats the five most important versions of UNIX:

• System V, the newest AT&T offering.
• System III, the basis for many current implementations.
• Version 7, the last release to come from Bell Laboratories research organization.
• Berkeley 4.2BSD from the University of California
• Xenix, a product of Microsoft Corporation — the popular microcomputer version.

Among the system calls covered: I/O on files and terminals; processes (multi-tasking); communication between processes; signals; and system administration.

1. Fundamental Concepts
1. Introduction
2. Files
1. Ordinary Files
2. Directories
3. Special Files
3. Programs and Processes
4. Signals
5. Process-IDs and Process Groups
6. Permissions
7. Other Process Attributes
8. Interprocess Communication
9. Using System Calls
10. Programming Conventions
11. Portability
2. Basic File I/O
1. Introduction
2. File Descriptors
3. creat System Call
4. unlink System Call
5. Implementing Semaphores with Files
6. open Aystem Call
7. write System Call
8. read System Call
9. close System Call
10. Buffered I/O
11. lseek System Call
12. Portability
3. Advanced File I/O
1. Introduction
2. I/O on Directories
3. I/O on Disk Special Files
4. Dates and Times
5. File Modes
6. link System Call
7. access System Call
8. mknod System Call
9. chmod System Call
10. chown System Call
11. utime System Call
12. stat and fstat System Calls
13. fcntl System Call
14. Portability
4. Terminal I/O
1. Introduction
2. Normal Terminal I/O
3. Nonblocking Terminal I/O
4. ioctl System Call
1. Basic ioctl Usage
2. Speed, Character Size, and Parity
3. Character Mapping
4. Delays and Tabs
5. Flow Control
6. Control Characters
7. Echo
8. Punctual Input
5. Raw Terminal I/O
6. Other Special Files
5. Processes
1. Introduction
2. Environment
3. exec System Calls
4. fork System Call
5. exit System Calls
6. wait System Call
7. System Calls to get IDs
8. setuid and setgid System Calls
9. setpgrp System Call
10. chdir System Call
11. chroot System Call
12. nice System Call
13. Portability
6. Basic Interprocess Communication
1. Introduction
2. pipe System Call
3. dup System Call
4. A Real Shell
5. Bidirectional Pipes
6. Portability
7. Advanced Interprocess Communication
1. Introduction
2. Database Management System Issues
3. FIFOs, or Named Pipes
4. Implementing Messages with FIFIs
5. Message System Calls (System V)
6. Semaphores
1. Basic Semaphore Usage
2. Implementing Semaphores With Messages
3. Seamphores in System V
4. Semaphores in Xenix
7. Shared Memory
1. Basic Shared Memory Usage
2. Shared Memory in System V
3. Shared Memory in Xenix
8. Record Locking in Xenix 3
9. Portability
8. Signals
1. Introduction
2. Types of Signals
3. signal System Call
4. Global J́umps
5. kill System Call
6. pause System Call
7. alarm System Call
8. Portability
9. Miscellaneous System Calls
1. Introduction
2. ulimit System Call
3. brk and sbrk System Calls
4. umask System Call
5. ustat System Call
6. uname System Call
7. sync System Call
8. profil System Call
9. ptrace System Call
10. times System Call
11. time System Call
12. stime System Call
13. plock System Call (System V)
14. mount System Call
15. umount System Call
16. acct System Call
17. sys3b System Call (System V)
18. Portability

• Appendix A: System V Process Attributes
• Appendix B: Standard Subroutines

This is a classic. Read it to understand how books about programming should be made.