Product Description

Designed for first-time and experienced users, this book describes the UNIX® programming environment and philosophy in detail. Readers will gain an understanding not only of how to use the system, its components, and the programs, but also how these fit into the total environment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107035 in Books
• Published on: 1984-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 357 pages

Customer Reviews

Oldies but goldies
Merely half an inch thick, and employing the same cover design - or lack of it - as the C Programming Language, this is probably the least pretentious looking book on my bookshelf. However, the look is misleading - there are very few books, regardless of length, that aim to teach you as much as this one, and even fewer than succeed in it.

Unix programming environment might sound a rather ambitious title nowadays, when a tutorial on each specialized tool can easily exceed 400 pages. However, this one actually delivers everything that it promises. Kernighan and Pike start with the basic description of Unix file system and the basic set of commands, continue with the command shell, redirection and piping. Next come the filters: regular expressions, grep, sort, sed and awk. At that point, the reader is ready for the full-fledged treatment of the command shell programming. Next come standard I/O and Unix system calls, followed by the program development tools: make, lex and yacc. The course is concluded with a chapter on document formatting with troff.

The chapters on I/O and system calls imply familiarity with the C programming language. The already mentioned tutorial on C by Kernighan and Ritchie, written in much the same style and spirit, can serve as the introduction to it. Also, while the book keeps up with its age remarkably well, there are some points where the described Unix system differs from the modern POSIX systems (most user commands are however backward compatible and still accept the old syntax). The required changes are really minor, but can nevertheles annoy an innocent reader.

The book belongs to nowadays rare breed of books on computers written for engineers and CS students rather than for dummies and idiots. Although primarily written for individual study, it can be used for one-semester course on Unix (like in C Programming Language, the exercises are lacking solutions, though). I would love to see it made-up with POSIX syntax and generally reflecting the changes made to Unix during the past 15 years.

If you only get one Unix book get this one
This book will give you the insight you need to exploit the essential simplicity and power of Unix-like environments. It may not cover the latest, but it will give you the core you need to build on and develop. Highly recommended.

Classic introduction to Unix programming
The key material covered in this book is : - the Unix file system, (Bourne) shell commands & script programming, text processing (using grep, awk and sed), file I/O, system calls and document processing (using troff/nroff, etc).

The book is written in a traditional, no-frills format but is easy to follow, with clear code examples.

Systems programming is not covered any great depth (To fill this gap I would recommend the advanced Unix programming books by Rochkind and Stevens).

For a book published 15 years ago, it inevitably misses newer additions (no coverage of C-shell, K-shell, vi, Perl, etc.). Despite this it is still the classic introduction to Unix programming.