Advanced programming in the UNIX environment 2nd edition?

[graudeejs]

Advanced programming in the UNIX environment 2nd edition?
by W. Richard Stevens
Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series

Does someone here have this book?
Is it worth to buy for $40-$50


In the book there are various example of programming in Linux 2.4, FreeBSD 5.1....
i wonder how outdated it would be

[Oko]

Originally Posted by killasmurf86

Advanced programming in the UNIX environment 2nd edition?
by W. Richard Stevens
Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series

Does someone here have this book?
Is it worth to buy for $40-$50


In the book there are various example of programming in Linux 2.4, FreeBSD 5.1....
i wonder how outdated it would be

Depends what you need. If you want to learn little bit C and Unix than you should start with B. Kernighan and D. Ritchie book "Programming Language C". For Unix the best reference is Brian Kenighan and Rob Pike's book "The Unix Programming Environment". The above books are written in early 80s and you could find them on Amazon for $0.01 +$3.99 for shipping (obviously used).

The Richard Stevens book Advanced programming in the UNIX environment as the title suggest is the Advanced system programming in Unix. After reading that book and let say "The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System" you should not have any problems to fiddle with OpenBSD or NetBSD kernels. For FreeBSD you probably want to read "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" instead.

Late Richard Stevens is one of most prolific and best writers about Unix. I had a fortune to meet him in Tucson Arizona while I was Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona (Mathematics) in late 90s. He unfortunately died
1999 in early age of 48. Most of his books are written in early 90s so you can safely buy first editions as the editions differ slightly except for his
3 volume book on Network programming which was originally only one volume.

You can get advanced programming on Amazon probably for $0.01 plus
$3.99 for shipping.



Cheers,
OKO

[drhowarddrfine]

Originally Posted by Oko

Most of his books are written in early 90s

You can buy much newer ones than that. Network Programming is from 2004 and I think the Unix one is 2006. It's been kept up to date by someone who helped Stevens write the original text, I believe.

And, yes, the books are excellent and well worth the price.

[Oko]

Originally Posted by drhowarddrfine

You can buy much newer ones than that. Network Programming is from 2004 and I think the Unix one is 2006. It's been kept up to date by someone who helped Stevens write the original text, I believe.

And, yes, the books are excellent and well worth the price.

I saw the new editions. I honestly do not think they are worthy of extra $50 or $60 but that is only my private opinion

[anemos]

Actually, Unix Network Programming - Volume 1 - Third Edition was published in 2003, building on the legendary work of Richard Stevens and new topics have been added i.e. IPv6 API, etc.

The book is considered as a milestone for Unix network programming. Recently, while reading a tutorial for the Windows Sockets API, I was surprised to see a couple of references to this book. Imagine...

Anyways, I too agree that it can be bought at a lower price.

[TerryP]

What's so surprising anemos? The Windows socket api was modeled on the sockets api from BSD, there are differences but it's /close enough/ in many ways.

You include winsock.h instead of a mish mash of headers, which is nice imho. s/errno/WSAGetLastError()/g and a few other related pains on error handling... but livable. The windows socket api and 'spawn.*()' family of functions are probably the high points of working with a windows machine. Sockets programming is basically sockets programming, but it's only part of what you can do on a unix box, the rest... well that's when it can really become a royal pain in the keester to port an app to windows IMHO, and still have fun in the process.


----

The 2nd edition of 'Advanced programming in the UNIX environment' is on amazon for about $50-$65 between used and new at the moment, but the list price is $80 !!! You can get a look at the table of contents and some previews here. This book looks like it's worth even $150 if you ask me. Also if you're not prepared to use manual pages, google, standards documents, and existing programs instead of buying this sucker, I think anyone is going to really want this book if they are learning to write programs on a unix box in C.

Dang... now I wish I had it on my bookshelf, it would be a time saver lol.


Looking at the foreward, it sounds like most of the changes are basically updates to do with the changing times, e.g. new(er) posix/sus, c99, also sounds like the 2nd edition might be a good idea if you work as a programmer (I don't, and I'm a cheap bastard too), dealing with linux or *bsd systems a lot. But the 1st edition would probably be fine for many people, if they can't or won't pay for the 2nd edition.


If I had the cash to go spending on programming books, I'd deffo nab most of these books, then by a larger bookshelf....

[graudeejs]

OK, seams i will be buying that book

[drhowarddrfine]

Originally Posted by anemos

Actually, Unix Network Programming - Volume 1 - Third Edition was published in 2003, building on the legendary work of Richard Stevens and new topics have been added i.e. IPv6 API, etc.

Just to nitpick but it's 2004.

[graudeejs]

OK, i bought it.
It's 2005 year book, approx 1k pages.
It cost me 36.18 USD

[anemos]

Originally Posted by TerryP

What's so surprising anemos? The Windows socket api was modeled on the sockets api from BSD, there are differences but it's /close enough/ in many ways.

Indeed. It is the Sockets API after all. What surprised me was the fact that the book itself was used as a reference in a Windows programming tutorial. But I suppose it is more common than to see a Windows reference in a *nix tutorial.

Just to nitpick but it's 2004.

http://www.amazon.com/Unix-Network-P...4957258&sr=8-1

[drhowarddrfine]

Well, I don't know why that is but the cover of my book, sitting here on my lap, is different than that one, and the copyright inside says 2005.

EDIT: I just now noticed that, in the upper right hand corner, it shows the cover of that one in the link and says "Updated Classic!". I'll scan it later.

[DNAeon]

One could also give a look at the e-book(s).

It not that hard to find W. Richard Stevens books on the net, but of course a real book with real pages is better than the e-book

And also, I think that Richard Stevens books are a great resource of knowledge about programming and UNIX.

P.S.: If someone needs the e-book - PM me, I think I can find some of them