POSIX Programmers Guide

By David R. Hill and Gerald J. Porter

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0937175730
• ISBN13: 9780937175736
• Release Date: May 1991
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Best Way to Write Portable Programs

For many programmers, interoperability is the name of the game. Write once, compile everywhere. Yes, compile, because a compiled program runs 80 times as fast as an interpreted program. Now comes the gotcha: different compilers come with different libraries. C source written for HP-UX might look different from C source written for Solaris, which might look different from C source written for AIX or Linux. What...

Guide for the Newbie, Reference for the Pro

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...

Readable, informative, and well organized

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.

Absolutely indispensable reference book

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...

Best man pages of any reference book

A very good tutorial and an excellent reference. I use the reference pages in the POSIX Prorgraamer's Guide for all of the normal library functions and I know my program will be portable.