Help on Reading UNIX Programming Books.

vectrum · April 18, 2016, 2:52pm

I've purchased few unix/linux programming books and also planning to buy couple of books in future. I've got the following books;

Advanced Unix Programming(2nd ed) -- M. Rochkind.

Advanced Programming on Unix Environment(3rd ed) -- Late Rick Stevens & Rago.

Unix Systems Programming - Concurrency and Threads -- Robbins & Robbins.

I'd, also like to buy Linux programming interface (Kerrisk) and Understanding Unix/Linux Progrmming.. (Moley), but, I can't afford to buy those two books now.

Plz tell me which books I should begin with and which one I should study next when I finish (or after gaining some experiences) the first book.

Thank you.

gandolf989 · April 18, 2016, 3:19pm

IMHO, books are a bad investment. You should try to come up with scripting project that you can work on. You can also look through the posts here for things that people are working on and either try to understand and verify other people answers or even improve on other people's answers. It's fine to read about programming, but at some point you need to go and do it. If there is a particular snippet of code that you are trying to write finding it in a book will take more time than googling it. Therefore it gets easier to see what you can find from google than to pull out a physical book that might or might not have a good example for what you are trying to accomplish. You may also just want to focus on Bash with perhaps some awk and sed thrown in.

vectrum · April 18, 2016, 3:35pm

I want to learn unix system programming with the api(s) for system calls and std libs of C. I feel uneasy reading e-books so I bought hard copies.
I'm learning shl scripting.
Thnx.

drl · April 18, 2016, 3:40pm

Hi.

I like books. I like the feel, and I like that I can write notes in them.

However, no one can advise you unless you say what your goals are. System programmer, designer, software craftsman, system administrator, etc.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

vectrum · April 18, 2016, 3:52pm

system programming of course, but one has to start from the beginning.

drl · April 18, 2016, 4:26pm

Hi.

OK, assuming this is what you are aiming at:

-- Systems programming - Wikipedia

Then starting from the beginning:

Who Should Read This Book

You should read this book if you are an experienced Unix programmer who is often in the position of either educating novice programmers or debating partisans of other operating systems, and you find it hard to articulate the benefits of the Unix approach.

You should read this book if you are a C, C++, or Java programmer with experience on other operating systems and you are about to start a Unix-based project.

You should read this book if you are a Unix user with novice-level up to middle-level skills in the operating system, but little development experience, and want to learn how to design software effectively under Unix.

You should read this book if you are a non-Unix programmer who has figured out that the Unix tradition might have something to teach you. We believe you're right, and that the Unix philosophy can be exported to other operating systems. So we will pay more attention to non-Unix environments (especially Microsoft operating systems) than is usual in a Unix book; and when tools and case studies are portable, we say so.

You should read this book if you are an application architect considering platforms or implementation strategies for a major general-market or vertical application. It will help you understand the strengths of Unix as a development platform, and of the Unix tradition of open source as a development method.

You should not read this book if what you are looking for is the details of C coding or how to use the Unix kernel API. There are many good books on these topics; Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment [Stevens92] is classic among explorations of the Unix API, and The Practice of Programming [Kernighan-Pike99] is recommended reading for all C programmers (indeed for all programmers in any language).

-- The Art of Unix Programming
It is old, but is available on-line if you wish to see if it is worthwhile --
http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/

Still in stock at --
http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-Programming-Addison-Wesley-Professional-Computng/dp/0131429019/ref=sr\_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461011072&sr=8-1&keywords=art\+of\+unix\+programming

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

vectrum · April 18, 2016, 7:01pm

Thanks. I've got the copy but it's more on programming philosophy.
I have to soil my hands by opening, reading, writing and closing
files with sys calls and using std. lib with the same functionality.
There are plenty of other jobs to do.

drl · April 19, 2016, 7:05am

Hi.

When we moved from a mainframe environment to a UNIX(TM) environment, most of us used this by Kernighan and Pike:
The Unix Programming Environment (Prentice-Hall Software Series): Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike: 9780139376818: Amazon.com: Books

Later, they wrote another:
The Practice of Programming (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series): 9780201615869: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

The first takes you from very basic stuff to software development tools, the second concentrates on productivity within that environment.

Because these are old, you should be able to find very inexpensive copies.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

bakunin · April 19, 2016, 9:04am

This is true, but it is still the right book.

Unix is as much a collection of various APIs as it is a culture. Unix programs systematically react always "the same" in a very intricate way (the one which this book talks about) and even if you use all the APIs in an apparently correct way you might write a program which is "not UNIX" and will fit poorly into the rest (i have seen accomplished mainframe programmers do exactly that and the result was barely usable albeit being "correct" in some sense).

There are some books which have this lasting value - "Programming in the Unix Environment" is one of them and Raymonds' book is another. Here is another, centering on network programming, which plays a big role in a network-centered OS like UNIX:

"UNIX Network Programming", by W. Richard Stevens

If you budget is unlimited I'd also suggest the 3 volumes of "TCP/IP Illustrated" by the same author.

If you are interested in how a UNIX kernel is actually implemented there is one bible on this:

"Operating Systems Design and Implementation" by Andrew S. Tanenbaum

I hope this helps.

bakunin