gdsd1@homxb.UUCP (M.LAI) (08/21/85)
Marc J. Rochkind "Advanced UNIX Programming", Prentice Hall
Software Series, ISBN 0-13-011800-1 (PBK), 1985, ~ $24.95.
I'm usually pretty sarcastic when it comes to "commercial"
UNIX books. It was just a couple of years ago that you'd
walk into a B. Dalton's and have to special order K&R.
Now the shelves are full of everything and the kitchen sink.
This one's worth it's price. It fits right in next to K&R,
K&P, J. Bentley's "Writing Efficient Programs", and Brooks'
"The Mythical Man Month".
Contents:
1. Fundamental Concepts
2. Basic File I/O
3. Advanced File I/O
4. Terminal I/O
5. Processes
6. Basic Interprocess Communication
7. Advanced Interprocess Communication
8. Signals
9. Miscellaneous System Calls
Appendix A: System V Process Attributes
Appendix B: Standard Subroutines
Rochkind makes the statement
"Unless I've noted otherwise, everything in this book applies
to System III, System V, and Xenix 3..."
and pretty much sticks to this touching upon Berkeleyisms and other
issues in the "portability" section at the end of each chapter.
If the 4.2 UPM is your bible this book will probably not satisfy you.
The book contains several good C examples in a more advanced approach
than K&P. It sticks closely to system calls; not standard library
functions. An iterative development of several routines is used
to discuss IPC. The discussion on ioctls and System V IPC is good.
I'm surprised he didn't mention kill(pid, 0) to check if a proc
is still alive in the section on signals.
Rochkind has a nice readable style over the 265 pages.
In my opinion, "Advanced UNIX Programming" is good reading.
--
#include <disclaim.h>
Neal Nuckolls
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