Rights Contact Login For More Details
More About This Title Beginning Linux Programming, 4th Edition
English
English
All of Neil’s "home" projects are developed using Linux. He says Linux is much easier because it supports quite a lot of features from other systems, so that both BSD- and System V-targeted programs will generally compile with little or no change.
Neil is currently working as an Enterprise Architect specializing in IT strategy at Celesio AG. He has a background in technical consultancy, software development techniques, and quality assurance. Neil has also programmed in C and C++ for real-time embedded systems.
Rick Stones started programming at school (more years ago than he cares to remember) on a 6502-powered BBC micro, which, with the help of a few spare parts, continued to function for the next 15 years. He graduated from Nottingham University with a degree in Electronic Engineering, but decided software was more fun.
Over the years he has worked for a variety of companies, from the very small with just a dozen employees, to the very large, including the IT services giant EDS. Along the way he has worked on a range of projects, from real-time communications to accounting systems, to very large help desk systems. He is currently working as an IT architect, acting as a technical authority on various major projects for a large pan-European company.
A bit of a programming linguist, he has programmed in various assemblers, a rather neat proprietary telecommunications language called SL-1, some FORTRAN, Pascal, Perl, SQL, and smidgeons of Python and C++, as well as C. (Under duress he even admits that he was once reasonably proficient in Visual Basic, but tries not to advertise this aberration.)
English
Acknowledgements x
Foreword xxiii
Introduction xxv
Chapter 1: Getting Started 1
An Introduction to UNIX, Linux, and GNU 1
Programming Linux 4
Getting Help 14
Summary 16
Chapter 2: Shell Programming 17
Why Program with a Shell? 18
A Bit of Philosophy 18
What Is a Shell? 19
Pipes and Redirection 21
The Shell as a Programming Language 23
Going Graphical — The dialog Utility 75
Putting It All Together 81
Summary 91
Chapter 3: Working with Files 93
Linux File Structure 94
System Calls and Device Drivers 96
Library Functions 97
Low-Level File Access 98
The Standard I/O Library 109
Formatted Input and Output 113
File and Directory Maintenance 120
Scanning Directories 122
Errors 127
The /proc File System 128
Advanced Topics: fcntl and mmap 132
Summary 135
Chapter 4: The Linux Environment 137
Program Arguments 137
Environment Variables 144
Time and Date 148
Temporary Files 156
User Information 158
Host Information 161
Logging 163
Resources and Limits 167
Summary 173
Chapter 5: Terminals 175
Reading from and Writing to the Terminal 175
Talking to the Terminal 180
The Terminal Driver and the General Terminal Interface 182
The termios Structure 184
Terminal Output 196
Detecting Keystrokes 205
Summary 209
Chapter 6: Managing Text-Based Screens with curses 211
Compiling with curses 212
Curses Terminology and Concepts 213
The Screen 216
The Keyboard 221
Windows 224
Subwindows 230
The Keypad 232
Using Color 235
Pads 238
The CD Collection Application 240
Summary 254
Chapter 7: Data Management 255
Managing Memory 255
File Locking 264
Databases 281
The CD Application 289
Summary 309
Chapter 8: MySQL 311
Installation 312
MySQL Administration 320
Accessing MySQL Data from C 335
The CD Database Application 358
Summary 375
Chapter 9: Development Tools 377
Problems of Multiple Source Files 377
The make Command and Makefiles 378
Source Code Control 392
Writing a Manual Page 406
Distributing Software 409
RPM Packages 413
Other Package Formats 424
Development Environments 424
Summary 427
Chapter 10: Debugging 429
Types of Errors 429
General Debugging Techniques 430
Debugging with gdb 437
More Debugging Tools 445
Assertions 452
Memory Debugging 453
Summary 459
Chapter 11: Processes and Signals 461
What Is a Process? 461
Process Structure 462
Starting New Processes 468
Signals 481
Summary 493
Chapter 12: POSIX Threads 495
What Is a Thread? 495
Advantages and Drawbacks of Threads 496
A First Threads Program 497
Simultaneous Execution 501
Synchronization 503
Thread Attributes 512
Canceling a Thread 517
Threads in Abundance 520
Summary 524
Chapter 13: Inter-Process Communication: Pipes 525
What Is a Pipe? 525
Process Pipes 526
Sending Output to popen 528
The Pipe Call 531
Parent and Child Processes 535
Named Pipes: FIFOs 540
The CD Database Application 553
Summary 575
Chapter 14: Semaphores, Shared Memory, and Message Queues 577
Semaphores 577
Shared Memory 586
Message Queues 594
The CD Database Application 599
IPC Status Commands 604
Summary 605
Chapter 15: Sockets 607
What Is a Socket? 608
Socket Connections 608
Network Information 624
Multiple Clients 632
Datagrams 642
Summary 644
Chapter 16: Programming GNOME Using GTK+ 645
Introducing X 645
Introducing GTK+ 648
Events, Signals, and Callbacks 655
Packing Box Widgets 658
GTK+ Widgets 661
GNOME Widgets 676
GNOME Menus 677
Dialogs 682
CD Database Application 687
Summary 699
Chapter 17: Programming KDE Using Qt 701
Introducing KDE and Qt 701
Installing Qt 702
Signals and Slots 705
Qt Widgets 712
Dialogs 727
Menus and Toolbars with KDE 733
CD Database Application Using KDE/Qt 738
Summary 746
Chapter 18: Standards for Linux 747
The C Programming Language 748
Interfaces and the Linux Standards Base 751
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 755
Further Reading about Standards 758
Summary 759
Index 761
