Unix System Programming

a college professor in college made us buy this book for his class, and i'd give him a big kiss on the lips if i saw him today, because this book has helped me a lot. that statement says a lot, because i am a dude, and i'm not a fan of kissing other dudes. you will not find huge examples of code in this book. there are no big projects in it. what you will find is a great breakdown of a lot of UNIX functions for C, and small, detailed examples of how to use them. it has everything from how to handle time, how to use sockets, how to read/write data to files, and a lot of other things. sometimes when you're working on a project, you forget the little things, and you will ask yourself something like "how do i make sure a file exists before i try to read it in?", or "how do i use a semaphore again?". this is the book that answers all of those little questions that you will have over the course of a project.

Thanks for the book its helping alot in my class, great condition and i got it fast

What can I say? If someone would even consider returning a book (and jumping to a two-star review) because the authors didn't make the source code available and feels it a waste of time to type and debug the code then perhaps this individual should consider a different career than programming -- one that requires less typing.

After reading more I decided to keep the book. I changed my rating from two to four stars. I want to be fair to the book; It is much better than initially stated. In terms of the source code... it is not too much of an issue; the code is compact and to the point (still better if they provided the code). I did buy Practical UNIX Programming and are using both books. Along with UNIX System V Network Programming by Rago, I have the necessary stepping-stones into the Steven's Books (TCP 1-3, Advanced UNIX, UNIX Network Programming Vol1-2, etc).

A good technical book; A stepping-stone into Advanced UNIX Programming by Steven's. As an alternative... I purchased Practical UNIX Programming by Kay A. Robbins, Steven Robbins, Kay, Ret Robbins. It is better priced and hardcover. The Contents are compatible to the above book and full source-code is on the Web.