If you've been using DOS, and now have your Linux system up and running, and you want to do C language program development in this new environment, this book is for you. When moving over to Linux, an obstacle some of us soon encounter is the absence of a familiar text editor. Your perferred editor probably is the one with which you are thoroughly familiar. With that thought in mind, what we do here is, we write our own.
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Editorial Reviews
From the Author
While yet a child, the originator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, working at the VIC 20 command line, wrote BASIC programs in what is now considered to be an obsolete dialect. Soon he was writing hand-assembled machine code for the VIC 20. The straightforward architecture of Chuck Peddle's 6502 perhaps encouraged Linus to explore and such explorations evidently gave young Linus an excellent grounding in the fundamentals. Where would a young Linus of today find such an accessible rung?
Short of digging a VIC 20 out of the attic, where can today's beginner find a starting place comparable to where Linus started? The thesis of this book is that a beginner is well served by starting at the command line; with programming tools designed primarily for simplicity, tools that assist by helping you explore the consequences of your own decisions rather than attempting to make those decisions for you. This book gives the reader experience at the keyboard, sans mouse, using text mode to communicate with the computer via the time-honored command line.
We cannot know for certain that command line experience contributed to the success of today's top programmers. What we do know for certain is that many of the really skillful programmers of today, such as Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Richard Stallman, Theodore Ts'o, Eric S. Raymond, W. Richard Stevens, and so on, did as a matter of fact, begin programming when such experience was the norm. It's true, we don't know for sure, but the odds are, such experience is essential.
Readers who can put this book to advantage include those have been using DOS, and who have found the migration path to Linux seems to ford a rather deep channel. In this book they will find tools to build their own bridge to Linux.
It is a small book. My approach aligns with that of Kernighan & Ritchie who remarked in the preface to their second edition, "C is not a big language, and is not well served by a big book."
From the Inside Flap
When the author first became aware of Linux and the world of open source software, an early impression supported the notion that here at last is a system wherein users will indeed take total control of such things as the mundane text editor. No longer would they be constrained to simply read the manual and learn the rules; to practice only with what the original author offered. Although there are books available that tell how to customize emacs, the author's efforts in that direction when largely unrewarded. Even Linus complains about emacs, so obviously there is somewhere a gap in the theory. What appears to happen in practice is that large programs like emacs, and vi, and even joe, are modified only by the original programmers. The author's hunch is that many users would modify the text editor that they use if the source code was compact and unintimidating. Yet the author was advised by a major publisher that the reviews "...are positive regarding the readability and technical content. What reviewers have raised serious doubts about is the market need for a book like this. The consensus seems to be that there isn't a need for a book that would teach someone [how to write] a text editor." So there you have it.
Linux, as it happens, is just one of the revolutions occurring on the planet. A revolution is well underway in publishing. As Don Lancaster[BYTE, May 1990] pointed out some years ago, and as W. Richard Stevens[see, for example, Advanced Progamming in the UNIX Environment] has demonstrated, the author who typesets his own book can allow instantaneous feedback to help clarify the presentation, and can exercise sovereign control over the final product. Authoring becomes, once again, solo art. Gutenburg's movable type revolutionized printing. Desktop computers and the Internet are revolutionizing publishing. In today's world we can allow the market to speak for itself.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reserve a Spot on Your Bookshelf for This One,
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This review is from: Build your own LINUX C Toolbox (Two Moon Press software series) (Paperback)
This book is great. By working through the examples of the book, you build your own file browser, and ultimately your own text editor. This book is good for anybody who wants an understanding of what Linux is all about in a non intimidating way. The book is packed with everything you need. It is my opinion that you not only get a grounding in programming in C, but an indoctrination to the way of Linux. The most important thing about this book is it gives you a chance to dabble with source code and find out it's easy and fun. Don't be fooled by the size of this book. Great things do come in small packages.
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
That's not the way he went,
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This review is from: Build your own LINUX C Toolbox (Two Moon Press software series) (Paperback)
The description on this page states the book isintended for readers who are Linux beginners, states a major goal of the book is to present a recipe useful for creating a text editor of one's own, and details supporting reasons for doing so; remarking the reality that the best place for a beginner to begin is at the beginning, preferably the beginning that was; where text mode was the norm, where for example Linus Torvalds began. Focused exercises using portions of the curses Although Linux appears to have been designed from Criticism meaningfully remarks mismatched goals
2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Looking from a perspective of useabillity,
This review is from: Build your own LINUX C Toolbox (Two Moon Press software series) (Paperback)
Hi all!This book isn't neceserily a "Linux Programing" book because other than commands to mount the diskette or CD-ROM or DOS partition it really doesn't have anything with Linux but with curses and UNIXoids in general. It creates an editor using curses library under console Creating yet another editor under Linux is not what Linux society now needs. It would be better that the writer has concentrated on advanced concepts of GNU make, automake, autoconf, gdb, i18n libraries calls, and the linux system programming overall, or at least to describe curses functions as a reference so that the book can be usefull even after one has read it. The book is perfect for a UNIX/C beggining programer, but considering usability, it has come out 5-7 years to late for any Linux user. And last, I would reccomend "Programming with GNU Software" from O'Reilly instead.
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