Using C on the UNIX System

Using C on the UNIX System

by David A. Curry

ISBN 10: 0-937175-23-4 / ISBN 13: 9780937175231

O'Reilly & Associates

January 1989

The following are made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may cite this document as a bibliographic reference in any works that you are writing. Any commercial use of this document, including printing and distribution to groups of people (such as a classroom) is prohibited without my prior written permission.

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From the back cover...

There are C programmers and there are UNIX programmers, and the difference between them is the knowledge of the system calls and special library routines available on the UNIX system.

If you are an intermediate to experienced C programmer, and you'd like to take the next step to become a UNIX system programmer, this book is for you. Students who wish to work for a university computer center, researchers wishing to write their own tools, systems programmers unfamiliar with UNIX who find they must write programs for their UNIX-based PC or workstation, bulletin board operators using a UNIX system to support their operation—all would be candidates for this book.

Topics covered include:

  • I/O without using stdio
  • Manipulating files and directories
  • Device I/O control
  • Getting information about users
  • Telling time and timing things
  • Processing signals
  • Creating processes and executing programs
  • Job control
  • Interprocess communication
  • Networking (Internet clients and servers)
  • Pseudo terminals
  • Reading kernel data structures

Table of Contents

Preface

Documentation Conventions

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 Introduction

System Calls vs. Library Routines

Versions of UNIX

Error Handling

Chapter 2 The Standard I/O Library

File Pointers

Opening and Creating Files

Closing Files

Reading and Writing Files

The getc and putc Routines

The fgets and fputs Routines

The fread and fwrite Routines

The fscanf and fprintf Routines

The sscanf and sprintf Routines

Moving Around in Files

Chapter 3 Low-Level I/O

File Descriptors

Opening and Creating Files

Opening and Creating Files on Older UNIX Systems

Closing Files

Reading and Writing Files

Moving Around in Files

Duplicating File Descriptors

Converting File Descriptors to File Pointers

Chapter 4 Files and Directories

File System Concepts

Ordinary Files

Directories

Special Files

Removable File Systems

Device Numbers

I-Numbers, the I-List, and I-Nodes

Hard Links

Symbolic Links

Determining the Accessibility of a File

Getting Information From an I-Node

Reading Directories

Modifying File Attributes

Miscellaneous File System Routines

Changing Directories

Deleting and Truncating Files

Making Directories

Linking and Renaming Files

Symbolic Links

The umask Value

Chapter 5 Device I/O Control

The Version 7 and Berkeley UNIX ioctl

Line Disciplines

The sgttyb Structure

The tchars Structure

The ltchars Structure

The Local Mode Word

The winsize Structure

Miscellaneous Operations

The System V ioctl

c_iflag

c_oflag

c_cflag

c_lflag

c_cc

The fcntl System Call

Non-Blocking I/O

The select System Call

Chapter 6 Information About Users

The Login Name

The User Id

The Group Id

The Berkeley UNIX Group Mechanism

Reading the Password File

Reading the Group File

Reading the utmp File

Chapter 7 Telling Time and Timing Things

Telling Time

Obtaining the Time

Timezones

Converting the Time to ASCII

Time Differences

Sleeping and Alarm Clocks

Sleeping

The Alarm Clock

Interval Timers

Process Timing

Changing File Times

Chapter 8 Processing Signals

Overview of Signal Handling

Resetting Signals

Restarting System Calls

The Signals

Sending Signals

Catching and Ignoring Signals

Ignoring Signals

Catching Signals

Using Signals for Timeouts

The setjmp and longjmp Routines

The New Berkeley UNIX Signal Mechanism

Handler Calling Conventions

The Signal Mask

The Signal Stack

Chapter 9 Executing Programs

The system Library Routine

Executing Programs Directly

Creating Processes

Executing Programs

Waiting for Processes to Terminate

Redirecting Input and Output

Setting Up Pipelines

The popen Library Routine

Creating Pipes Directly

Chapter 10 Job Control

Preliminary Concepts

The Controlling Terminal

Process Groups

System Calls

ioctl

setpgrp

killpg

wait3

The JOB and PROC Data Types

Job Control in the Shell

Setting Up for Job Control

Executing a Program

Stopping a Job

Backgrounding a Job

Foregrounding a Job

The jobs Command

Waiting for Jobs

Asynchronous Process Notification

Job Control Outside the Shell

Important Points

Chapter 11 Interprocess Communication

Berkeley UNIX IPC

The socket System Call

The bind System Call

The send and recv System Calls

The listen System Call

The shutdown System Call

Connection-Based Sockets

The accept System Call

The connect System Call

Connectionless Sockets

The sendto System Call

The recvfrom System Call

Connecting Datagram Sockets

A Small Client Program

A Small Server Program

System V IPC

Message Queues

The msgget System Call

The msgctl System Call

The msgsnd and msgrcv System Calls

Semaphores

The semget System Call

The semctl System Call

The semop System Call

Shared Memory

The shmget System Call

The shmctl System Call

The shmat System Call

The shmdt System Call

Chapter 12 Networking

Addresses

Translating Hostnames Into Network Numbers

Obtaining Port Numbers

Network Byte Order

Networking System Calls

Chapter 13 The File System

Disk Terminology

The "Standard" UNIX File System

The Berkeley Fast File System

Reading Data Blocks From the File System

Chapter 14 Miscellaneous Routines

Resource Limits

The getrlimit System Call

The setrlimit System Call

Obtaining Resource Usage Information

Manipulating Byte Strings

The bcmp and memcmp Library Routines

The bcopy and memcpy Library Routines

The bzero and memset Library Routines

Environment Variables

The Current Working Directory

Searching for Characters in Strings

Determining Whether a File is a Terminal

The isatty Library Routine

The ttyname Library Routine

The /dev/tty Device

Printing Error Messages

The perror Library Routine

The psignal Library Routine

Sorting Arrays in Memory

Appendix A Calling FORTRAN From C

Data Representation

Procedure Naming

Naming C Routines to be Called From FORTRAN

Naming FORTRAN Routines to be Called From C

Returning Values from Functions

Integer, Logical, Real, Double Precision

Complex and Double Complex

Character Strings

Passing Arguments

Integers, Floats (Reals), and Doubles

Characters and Logicals

Character Strings

Functions

Overall Argument Sequence

Input and Output

From C Programs

From FORTRAN Programs

Libraries

Further Information

Appendix B Using Berkeley UNIX Pseudo Terminals

Appendix C Reading Kernel Data Structures

Appendix D Berkeley UNIX Directory Compatibility Routines

Appendix E Interval Timer Version of nap()

Bibliography

Index

Colophon