Posix Programmers Guide [Paperback]

Donald Lewine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 1991

This guide, intended as an explanation of the POSIX standard and as a reference for the POSIX.1 programming library, helps you write more portable programs. Most UNIX systems today are POSIX compliant because the federal government requires it for its purchases. Even OSF and UI agree on support for POSIX.

Unfortunately, given the manufacturer's documentation, it can be difficult to distinguish system-specific features from those features defined by POSIX. The POSIX Programmer's Guide is especially helpful if you are writing programs that must run on multiple UNIX platforms. This guide also helps you convert existing UNIX programs for POSIX compliance.

Contents include:

• Introduction to POSIX.
• Basics of writing a POSIX-compliant program.
• Input/output facilities of the Standard C library.
• The file system as defined by POSIX.
• Operations of POSIX Input/Output system, pipes, and FIFOs.
• Creating and terminating processes and signals.
• Obtaining information about the environment.
• Communication line settings and a cu-like utility.
• POSIX and Standard C, including features and portability pitfalls.
• Internationalization.
• Complete list of library functions in alphabetic order.
• Complete list of data structures and their members.
• All error codes.
• Standard headers and the information that they define.
• Related publications.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This guide, intended as an explanation of the POSIX standard and as a reference for the POSIX.1 programming library, helps you write more portable programs. Most UNIX systems today are POSIX compliant because the federal government requires it for its purchases. Even OSF and UI agree on support for POSIX. Unfortunately, given the manufacturer's documentation, it can be difficult to distinguish system-specific features from those features defined by POSIX. The POSIX Programmer's Guide is especially helpful if you are writing programs that must run on multiple UNIX platforms. This guide also helps you convert existing UNIX programs for POSIX compliance. Contents include: Introduction to POSIX. Basics of writing a POSIX-compliant program. Input/output facilities of the Standard C library. The file system as defined by POSIX. Operations of POSIX Input/Output system, pipes, and FIFOs. Creating and terminating processes and signals. Obtaining information about the environment. Communication line settings and a cu-like utility. POSIX and Standard C, including features and portability pitfalls. Internationalization. Complete list of library functions in alphabetic order. Complete list of data structures and their members. All error codes. Standard headers and the information that they define. Related publications.

About the Author

Donald Lewine has been writing computer programs for fun and profit since 1960. He has been teaching computer science in the State-of-the-Art (evening) program at Northeastern University for the past eight years. He has taught courses on Assembler, VAX/VMS, PASCAL, C and UNIX. This book was written and tested over the last two years at Northeastern University. Mr. Lewine spent 13 years with the Digital Equipment Corporation developing operating systems and central processing units. He was Technical Director for the MicroVAS Program when he left. For the past seven years, Mr. Lewine has been with Data General Corporation, currently as Director of Engineering. In this role he has been developing the AViiON family of open systems. He is a founder and a member of the Board of Directors of 88open, a member of the Board of Directors of UNIX International, and Data General's representative to the Open Software Foundation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (April 8, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0937175730
• ISBN-13: 978-0937175736
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,103,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely indispensable reference book, March 17, 1999

By 

Bob Gebhart - See all my reviews

This review is from: Posix Programmers Guide (Paperback)

I always keep this book within easy reach. It is the most complete, lucid, comprehensible, and valuable reference for portable C and C++ programming. If you stick to the rules of the standard POSIX C function calls, as clearly and precisely stated in this exceptuional work, your programs will be portable; otherwise, they won't. I almost never refer to the Borland or Microsoft C/C++ help files for explanation of function call parameters; this book is the bible, the final authority on what you can and can't do. I am certain that it is accurate across SCO UNIX, Open Server, Xenix and AIX, and I would bet a ton it's just as accurate for the other UNIX OS's. Besides being absolutely authoritative, its best feature is that you don't have to be a guru to understand it; it's written beautifully, logically, clearly. If you write cross-platform C or C++ programs, you MUST have this book. I'd be lost without it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Guide for the Newbie, Reference for the Pro, March 13, 2001

By 

Elderbear (Loma Linda, Aztlan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Posix Programmers Guide (Paperback)

After 10 years of developing real-time software for DOS and embedded systems, I needed to develop software for the real-time O/S, QNX, a POSIX compliant O/S. Unlike DOS, QNX is a real operating system which demands a different programming paradigm. Without Lewine's book, I'm not certain I could have made the shift.

This book may be too complicated for somebody unfamiliar with C programming. But, if you know the language, it provides all the basics to successfully create software on a POSIX system. The first half of the book elaborates on how to do things in POSIX. Lewine does not assume that the reader knows anything about UNIX. Plenty of example code clarifies the the theory. All the examples are heavily annotated. One cannot *not* learn the POSIX programming paradigm from this book.

For real-time programming, information about POSIX.4 was needed, and I gleaned this from Gallmeister's PROGRAMMING FOR THE REAL WORLD POSIX.4, also an O'Reilly book. Once through these books, code began to flow from my keyboard. The QNX library manuals made far more sense.

As an "expert" (I've been doing this for about 5 years), I still refer to the back of Lewine's book. The last half is a reference to the POSIX library functions. Although I haven't done much programming under LINUX, I presume this would be a useful reference for that O/S. The latter half of the book documents the function calls at least as well as any manual for a C programming library that I've ever seen. I've gotten to the point where this book mostly sits on my shelf--but it's comforting to know that when I can't remember the arguments for sigprocmask(), I can take it down and find the answer quickly.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Readable, informative, and well organized, April 30, 2000

By 

"bmishler" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Posix Programmers Guide (Paperback)

When I bought this book I never realized how handy it would be. Reading it from cover to cover is a pleasure but it's also very easy to use as a reference -- I've never spent more than a minute trying to find whatever I need. This book has saved me uncountable hours both while debugging software and while porting to various platforms.