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Marc J. Rochkind
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Advanced UNIX Programming 2nd Edition

by Marc Rochkind (Author)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 34 ratings
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The changes to UNIX programming that have taken place since 1985 are extensive to say the least. The first edition of Advanced UNIX Programming is still used and considered to be a must have book on any UNIX programmer's shelf. With this new edition UNIX programmers now have a one-volume, comprehensive, in-depth guide to the essential system-level services provided to them by the UNIX family of operating systems - now including Linux, FreeBSD, and the Mac OS X kernel (Darwin). All UNIX application programs, regardless of what language they are written in, run on top of these services, so mastering them is essential for successful UNIX programming. And, with a movement towards open-source systems, programmers will appreciate the book's emphasis on portability.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    0131411543
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0131411548
  3. Edition
    2nd
  4. Publisher
    Addison-Wesley Professional
  5. Publication date
    April 29, 2004
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    6.75 x 1.25 x 9 inches
  8. Print length
    736 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The classic guide to UNIX® programming-completely updated!

UNIX application programming requires a mastery of system-level services. Making sense of the many functions-more than 1,100 functions in the current UNIX specification-is a daunting task, so for years programmers have turned to Advanced UNIX Programming for its clear, expert advice on how to use the key functions reliably.

An enormous number of changes have taken place in the UNIX environment since the landmark first edition. In Advanced UNIX Programming, Second Edition, UNIX pioneer Marc J. Rochkind brings the book fully up to date, with all-new, comprehensive coverage including:

  • POSIX
  • Solaris™
  • Linux®
  • FreeBSD
  • Darwin, the Mac™ OS X kernel
  • And more than 200 new system calls

Rochkind's fully updated classic explains all the UNIX system calls you're likely to need, all in a single volume!

  • Interprocess communication, networking (sockets), pseudo terminals, asynchronous I/O, advanced signals, realtime, and threads
  • Covers the system calls you'll actually use-no need to plow through hundreds of improperly implemented, obsolete, and otherwise unnecessary system calls!
  • Thousands of lines of example code include a Web browser and server, a keystroke recorder/player, and a shell complete with pipelines, redirection, and background processes
  • Emphasis on the practical-ensuring portability, avoiding pitfalls, and much more!

Since 1985, the one book to have for mastering UNIX application programming has been Rochkind's Advanced UNIX Programming. Now completely updated, the second edition remains the choice for up-to-the-minute, in-depth coverage of the essential system-level services of the UNIX family of operating systems.

About the Author

MARC J. ROCHKIND was fortunate enough to have worked at Bell Laboratories in the 1970s, when UNIX was still in its infancy. It was there that Rochkind made several key contributions to UNIX, notably the Source Code Control System. He wrote the first edition of Advanced UNIX Programming in 1984. This complete revision benefits from his years of post-Bell application systems development experience.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley Professional; 2nd edition (April 29, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 736 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0131411543
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0131411548
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 1.25 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 34 ratings

About the author

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Marc J. Rochkind

Marc J. Rochkind

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As an author, I'm best known for my computer books, especially "Advanced UNIX Programming." But now I have a novel, too: "Bernie's Bar and Girll" (that's right, "Girll") that you'll find a lot of fun to read. I've also republished a book by Ansel Adams, "Born Free and Equal," and a book of his Manzanar photographs.

You can find all about my apps (MacOS, Windows, iPhone/iPad), books, and other works on my website, basepath.com.

Not all of my books are listed here. The complete list is at http://www.amazon.com/Marc-Rochkind-s-Books/lm/RK03JYZ3MNTHG/ref=cm_lm_byauthor_title_full.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
34 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

H. E. Paul
5.0 out of 5 stars THE book to get for UNIX programming
Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2008
Verified Purchase
I am a systems administrator professionally, but I have a need to know the inner workings of UNIX that only seems to be covered in programming books. Specifically relating to certain system calls and interprocess communication methods.

This author has forgotten more about UNIX than I will ever grasp. While this book is dedicated to programming applications in UNIX and understanding the operating system's function calls, I am finding it to be a very handy reference for advanced system administration as well. The book is worth the price just for the chapters on process communication, in my opinion.

I really like the author's writing style. He gets down to business and covers the material without adding a lot of needless fluff or by making the chapters overly wordy.

The book is designed to server as a reference and is well-indexed, which is refreshing to find these days. It's very easy to find a topic you need as not everyone will need the amount of depth covered by each chapter in full.

I wish there were more UNIX books out there like this one.
13 people found this helpful
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W. Jim Jordan
4.0 out of 5 stars Technical excellence; worth owning
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2004
(reviewed for the Calgary Linux Users Group Guild)
There is a saying which goes, "UNIX is user-friendly; it's just picky about who its friends are." Upon reading Advanced UNIX Programming, I get the impression that Marc Rochkind may at one time have been a close friend of UNIX, but having become a little disillusioned by what UNIX has become in the 19 years since his first edition, is willing to settle for being a calm, professional acquaintance. His opening chapter provides two main reasons why this has happened: first, the UNIX kernel has grown from providing 70 or so system calls, to over 600 for an implementation that provides Single UNIX Specification and POSIX compliance; and second, there are so many flavours of UNIX out there (including Linux) that none of them implement exactly the same set of system calls. Thus the increasing complexity and diversity of UNIX implementations makes it difficult to know all that can be called UNIX intimately. Rochkind's book presents enough material to make the reader an acquaintance, leaving the building of a friendship as an exercise for the highly committed.
Rochkind makes a careful selection of just over 300 of the most important system calls and groups them into a handful of broad topics: I/O (file and terminal), processes and threads, inter-process communication (including sockets), signals, and timers. He takes great care to highlight what is available in Solaris (version 8), Linux (SuSE 8), BSD (FreeBSD 4.6), and Darwin (6.8; MacOS 10.2.8), and how to write something that has a hope of running on all of them. The system calls he describes are the ones anyone writing UNIX applications must know about. That is his target audience, and he meets that target squarely. If you are not already a C programmer and UNIX user, this book will not be useful for you.
The book contains exercises and several code samples. Some of the larger chunks of code implement a simple shell, an HTTP client, and a full-screen text-mode menu system. This is not trivial stuff; it is reflective of the title, and demonstrates in a short space how to put the kernel to use. Rochkind also includes some example code that should work, but will not, just to illustrate that things are not as simple as they could be. He then walks the reader through the necessary corrections, bringing enlightenment as he goes. Each chapter contains this mix of tutorial material, useful to those who are starting to explore the UNIX kernel and how it can serve their applications, and reference material, useful to those looking for the bit of wisdom a man page cannot provide, but years of experience can.
Rochkind also buries some treasure in the appendices. While his examples are all written in C, since this is the natural language for UNIX programming, he acknowledges that not every program that uses the UNIX kernel is going to be a C program. He describes two downloadable class libraries that map most of the UNIX kernel calls to objects and methods. These allow folk who prefer object-oriented languages to use the kernel without doing violence to their programming paradigm. Ux is a C++ wrapper, and Jtux is a Java wrapper that also works with Jython.
As one might expect, Advanced UNIX Programming contains an extensive bibliography and reference list. If you had all of the works and resources he lists on your shelf, the body of his book would be superfluous. He has distilled things well.
There are two technical things that I found missing from the book. The significant one is a discussion of how to deal with multiple processors, particularly around semaphores and other kinds of locks. This would be a valuable addition to the chapter on inter-process communications, especially now that these machines are becoming more common. The second, and by no means serious, omission is actually one that arises because of what he does include in an appendix: if he can describe a Java class library, why not make a reference to a set of Perl modules, too?
So why do I rate this book as less than outstanding? Well, one reason is a matter of taste. I am not a fan of C preprocessor macro functions, but Rochkind makes heavy use of them in his examples to simplify error trapping and reduce the volume of code that had to be printed. This forced me to read code in a different way than my colleagues and I write it. I found it awkward to pick out the particular system call being used when it was coded as a parameter to a macro. The second is that I found his treatment of signals to be confusing. Admittedly, signal handling is not simple (and the newer signal-handling calls do little to help), but the chapter on signals felt like it was rushed to completion to meet the publication deadline. I read that chapter twice, and am still scratching my head. Add a handful of typographical errors to these irritants, and I wound up with a book that was not a joy to read straight through, but a chore. I will still use the book as an occasional reference, reflecting the comfortable professional relationship, but not intimate friendship, I have with UNIX, and maybe I will learn more on a subsequent reading.
38 people found this helpful
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Andres Tarallo
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, much needed update
Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2016
Verified Purchase
I've meet the original edition from my Boss. He had a parcial photocopy of some chapters, maybe from his student days. I really enjoyed the book.

Many things happened since the first edition. This update was very need. It cover mostly system calls, as available on UNIX (Solaris), Linux and FreeBSD.

I was lucky enough to buy a second hand copy, like new.
3 people found this helpful
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brad
5.0 out of 5 stars Just right
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2005
Verified Purchase
This book starts at the beginning, assumes very little, and takes you quickly to the essentials you need to know about unix. The text is clear but too verbose - you can actually finish this book, which I find important for programmers who want to get a sound introduction and then get to coding. The new edition is updated for modern unix-like systems.
11 people found this helpful
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Huy Pham
5.0 out of 5 stars Informative
Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2007
Verified Purchase
The book is good for beginners. All you need to know to get started with Unix/Linux programming.
4 people found this helpful
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W Boudville
4.0 out of 5 stars Finally - Very Updated!
Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2004
In 1987, I encountered the first edition of Rochkind's book. Grew to depend on it as an authoritative discourse on serious unix interprocess programming. Now (finally!) he has issued an updated edition. (Has it really been 19 years?)
What is different? Much. Indeed, most of the book. In the first chapter, he summarises myriad developments in the unix world and, of course, the rise of linux. He writes for all the current unix variations and linux.
Since 1985, there has been a plethora of different interprocess communications methods. So the chapters on these form a prominent part of the book. Then, naturally, in the networking chapter, who can ignore the web? So Rochkind gives a concise detour into http, with example code for a simple browser and web server.
One thing unchanged from the first edition is the well deserved use of "Advanced" in the title. The treatment is sophisticated and, frankly, not an easy read for someone new to the subject. Rochkind writes well, but you do have to concentrate. He goes at a pace that at a very minimum assumes you are already facile in C and with using unix at the user level. The source code examples are simple, once you grasp the concepts.
The problems he furnishes in each chapter can be extremely useful if you want to deepen your understanding. The questions are nontrivial and usually expand on salient points discussed in the chapters. If you are indeed new to all this, you should make a serious attempt at the problems.
16 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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samaksh
4.0 out of 5 stars Good product.
Reviewed in India on December 29, 2018
Verified Purchase
Good product
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Matteo Ronchetti
5.0 out of 5 stars Ottimo libro
Reviewed in Italy on May 23, 2018
Verified Purchase
Libro di altissima qualità, ricco di informazioni e di piacevole lettura. La qualità di stampa non è delle migliori, ma vista la qualità del contenuto merita 5 stelle. Comprato usato, arrivato in ottime condizioni, spedizione veloce.
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iome87
4.0 out of 5 stars Molto utile
Reviewed in Italy on December 1, 2016
Verified Purchase
Ho apprezzato molto questo testo. Non è solo un manuale di chiamate di sistema, fornisce anche un minimo di background storico e tecnico per comprendere il comportamento delle funzioni, anche le più oscure. Inoltre, spesso vengono messi mette a confronto diversi sistemi unix-like (linux, solaris, bsd) per evidenziare come hanno interpretato lo standard, sia in termine di risultati prodotti che performance, discutendo sulle ragioni di eventuali differenze. La qualità della stampa, invece, è pessima: la carta dà fastidio al tatto, alcune pagine sono tagliate male e perde polvere di carta dai bordi. Come tutti i tomi brossurati e voluminosi, tende a spezzarsi tra le pagine dove rimane aperto per più tempo.
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Biswajit kar
4.0 out of 5 stars Nice book
Reviewed in India on March 16, 2016
Verified Purchase
I felt the paper quality was a little off, other than this everything's fine
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Rhein-Main
1.0 out of 5 stars Enttäuschendes Faksimile des Originals ("Digital on-demand print")
Reviewed in Germany on March 19, 2013
Verified Purchase
Als Referenz ist "Advanced UNIX Programming" großartig. Die Druckqualität, in der es daher kommt, ist es nicht. Dass das Buch als ein niedrig-aufgelöstes Faksimile in derart degradierter Qualität mit Treppeneffekten an allen horizontalen und vertikalen Linien ohne Hinweis verkauft wird, so als ob es sich um das Original handelte, hat mich ziemlich enttäuscht.

Man kann erkennen, dass mindestens vier Faktoren zur Qualitätsdegradierung beigetragen haben:

(1) einscannen eines Rasterdrucks mit
(2) niedriger Auflösung, ohne
(3) fehler-korrigierende Maßnahmen mit weiteren Einbußen durch
(4) Rasterdruck

So kommt es, beispielsweise, dass die im Original homogen gefüllten, klar abgegrenzten grauen Quadrate auf Seite xi im Faksimile, völlig ausgefranst, eher Batikmuster als Graustufen enthalten.

Wer dieses Buch schon mal in der Bibliothek, in der Arbeit oder bei Freunden gesehen hat, wird ob der schlechten Qualität dieses Drucks erschreckt sein.

Anfangs hatte ich den Verdacht, dass da etwas nicht mit rechten Dingen zugeht--bis ich den Hinweis auf der Impressumseite ganz unten entdeckt habe, "This product is printed digitally on demand". Unter dieser Phrase findet man per Google auch heraus, dass dies hier kein Einzelfall ist.
2 people found this helpful
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