Portable C and UNIX System Programming

Truly portable operating systems and languages are universally desired ideals. With good information and a disciplined approach, they can be achieved using current software technology.

This books deals with the writing of portable software. The reader will find discussions of the causes of portability problems, methods of creating portability, and standards that will ensure portable, maintainable software. These techniques and standards are easily generalized for any language or operating system.

For those using the C language and the UNIX^® system, there is a wealth of information specifically regarding the portable use of C language and major dialects of the UNIX system. The information in this book has been in use for several years on dozen of computer and applications.

1. Introduction
1. An Overview of Portability Issues
2. Portability Ranges
3. Portability Levels
4. An Overview of Portability Techniques
5. A Brief History of the UNIX System
6. The Evolution of C
2. Portable C Standard
1. Overview
2. Portability Definition File
3. The public and private Conventions
4. Public Storage Models
5. Memory Addressing Models
6. Significance Length of C Identifiers
7. The Preprocessor
8. Names and Initializations
9. Declaration and Use of Types
10. Data Representation
11. Character Sets
12. Expression Evaluation
13. Control Flow Constructs
14. Managing Multiple Modules
15. Modularization, Commenting, and Documentation
16. Error handling and Reporting
17. An Example
3. UNIX System Dialects and Portability
1. Dialect Groups and UNIX System Genealogy
2. UNIX Feature Tables
3. Option Switch Tables
4. General Notes and Caveats
5. Section 1 — Commands and Utilities
6. Section 1M/8 — Administration/Maintenance Tools
7. Section 2 — System Calls
8. Section 3 — Library Calls
9. Section 4 — Device Drivers and Special Files
10. Section 5 — File Formats and Conventions
11. Section 6 — Games
12. Section 7 — Miscellanea
4. I/O, Signals, and Data Portability
1. The ioctl(2) System Call
2. Signal Handling
3. External Data Format Portability
4. Directory Handling
5. Maintaining Portable Systems
1. Isolating Dependencies
2. Using Make and SCCS
3. maintaining Interface Files
4. Shell Scripts

1. Portability Definitions File
2. Portable UNIX System Features
3. Other Dialects
4. Portable Directory Handling

A classical book that ranks with K&R. Enough said.