Customer Reviews

UNIX for Programmers and Users (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an absolutely amazing book. You can read it if you know absolutely nothing about UNIX and learn how to use it. Else you can read it if you are an experienced user and find the reference information you need in a much simpler language than UNIX man pages or 1000-page manuals. The vast amount of information, no redundancy and clear explanations make this book worth every penny spent.

Contents of the book were put together were thoughtfully. It contains very comprehensive coverage of features and utilities of UNIX, including very detailed coverage of Bourne, Korn and C shells. Additionally it has very nice introductory chapters on Networking, Internet and X-Windows, just the right amount of information to give a reader solid understanding of the foundations of the topic. Programmers will surely appreciate chapters on UNIX development facilities and systems programming, which contain just the right amount of information to get you to accomplish your tasks without flooding you with unnecessary details. Also, author includes examples for every feature, short enough to effectively illustrate how to use them, which I found very helpful.

I personally used this book to teach myself UNIX (I was previously an NT person and didn't know anything about UNIX) and I am now doing hardcore development on Solaris with this book constantly on my desk.

I've had quite a few unix literature, but this book is one of the best I've seen on the subject. It does not intimidate beginners with unnecessary jargons, and still servers as a good reference book. I found chapter 13 (unix internals) really helpful. Don't let the dorky cover page fool you. Worth the last penny spent.

I had to port some Windows C/C++ code to Solaris and went to the bookstore hoping to find something that would bring me up to speed with the basic utilities and UNIX concepts from the perspective of a programmer. Bookstore shelves are usually crowded with books that deal with the admin part of Unix but good programming books are a tad harder to find.

The first few chapters about the commonly used utilities quickly taught me to navigate the system but a full 4 chapters are devoted to the shell - a general introduction, bsh, ksh and csh - which was too much for me. I skipped the ksh and csh chapters. Also the systems programming chapters goes into a lot of detail about files most of which I already knew. If you, like me are a Windows programmer making a transition to Unix, be prepared to wade through and often skip stuff you already know. The good thing however is that the writing style is lucid and clear and this book is an easy read. Introduction to file permissions(chown etc) is very well written. Examples are clear and well placed. The brief introductions to perl and awk are also useful.

Though the price is on the higher side, I think this book is a good buy. Its kept me interested and reading for over a week now and I must say I know so much more Unix for that. If it had been priced say 10-12 dollars lower, I might have given this baby a 4 on 5.

I have the first edition of this book, and used it in college. This book does a good job explaining the basics and some intermediate topics. I particularly enjoyed chapters on system programming and unix internals. Also, the book serves as a good reference.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to start out with UNIX.

This book covers all useful topics about the UNIX, which is what I like. However, this book has many programs and command which are out-of-date. The author need to update new programming styles in the UNIX. The author does not give detailed explanation of the regular expresstion which is very powerful in vi, grap, ed and awk utility.

Not only perfect book for people who try to start learning Unix system, but also great for reference if you are familliar with Unix and you just want a book that you can flip through when you forgot a command.

This book is a really good choice for a newcomer to Unix. Well organised, understandable, with examples, and very explanatory without confusing you. Certainly I suggest it.

I find Stallings' book an outstanding comprehensive reference, with good descriptions of commands and their options. I could see how it might be difficult to learn Unix with this book alone, but it is a good stepping stone for the intermediate Unix user.

I got the first edition of this book in the 1990s and I loved it. Recently (2007), I needed UNIX skills in my job again and I thought, "Why not pick up the latest edition - the 3rd?" Well folks - It is bad.

(1) It is poorly printed. Much of the text "fades out" in the low-quality printing they did. Even the binding and physical paper feel cheap when handled.

(2) Pages of text are unchanged from the early 1990s - which also seems cheap - except now it's worse, because they've added in typos and even technical errors.

(3) The index is so full of errors, it's unusable. Which means, if I want to look something up - forget it.

Save your money, folks. This edition is not worth the high price tag.

Really, it covers all topics of UNIX, no matter what you want, it can always give you an answer. A great buy!