"The first edition of this book has always been kept within arm's reach of my desk due to the wonderful explanations of all areas of the Linux userspace API. This second edition greatly overshadows the first one, and will replace it." --Greg Kroah-Hartman, Linux kernel programmer Develop Software that Leverages the Full Power of Today's Linux Linux Application Development, Second Edition,is the definitive reference for Linux programmers at all levels of experience, including C programmers moving from other operating systems. Building on their widely praised first edition, leading Linux programmers Michael Johnson and Erik Troan systematically present the key APIs and techniques you need to create robust, secure, efficient software or to port existing code to Linux. This book has been fully updated for the Linux 2.6 kernel, GNU C library version 2.3, the latest POSIX standards, and the Single Unix Specification, Issue 6. Its deep coverage of Linux-specific extensions and features helps you take advantage of the full power of contemporary Linux. Along the way, the authors share insights, tips, and tricks for developers working with any recent Linux distribution, and virtually any version of Unix. Topics include Developing in Linux: understanding the operating system, licensing, and documentation The development environment: compilers, linker and loader, and unique debugging tools System programming: process models, file handling, signal processing, directory operations, and job control Terminals, sockets, timers, virtual consoles, and the Linux console Development libraries: string matching, terminal handling, command-line parsing, authentication, and more Hundreds of downloadable code samples New to this edition The GNU C library (glibc), underlying standards, and test macros Writing secure Linux programs, system daemons, and utilities Significantly expanded coverage of memory debugging, including Valgrind and mpr Greatly improved coverage of regular expressions IPv6 networking coverage, including new system library interfaces for using IPv6 and IPv4 interchangeably Coverage of strace, ltrace, real-time signals, poll and epoll system calls, popt library improvements, Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM), qdbm, and much more Improved index and glossary, plus line-numbered code examples

Erik W. Troan, confounder and Executive VP of Operating Systems at Specifix, was formerly Vice President of Product Engineering at Red Hat.

We wrote this book for experienced (or not-so-experienced, but eager-to-learn) programmers who want to develop Linux software or to port software from other platforms to Linux. This is the book we wish we had when we were learning to program for Linux, and the book we now keep on our desks for reference. As soon as we wrote the first three chapters of the first edition, we were using the drafts as reference material while we worked.This second edition removes outdated information, adds new information, and introduces an online version. You can now browse and search the entire content of this book at http://ladweb.net/ to make this book even more useful to you.Linux is designed to be similar to Unix. This book gives you a good background in Unix programming basics and style. Linux is not fundamentally different from Unix; it differs in some details, but no more than one Unix version typically differs from another Unix version. This book is very much a Unix programming guide that is written from a Linux viewpoint and with specific Linux information.Linux also has unique extensions, such as its direct screen access capabilities (see Chapter 21), and it has features that are used more often on it than on other systems, such as the popt library (see Chapter 26). This book covers many of those extensions and features so that you can write programs that truly take advantage of Linux. If you are a C programmer, but you know neither Unix nor Linux, reading this book cover-to-cover and working with the examples should put you well on the road to being a competent Linux programmer. With the aid of system-specific documentation, you should find the transition to any version of Unix easy. If you are already a proficient Unix programmer, you will find that this book makes your transition to Linux easier. We have tried very hard to make it easy for you to find precisely the information you need to know. We also carefully and clearly cover topics that sometimes trip up even experienced Unix programmers, such as process and session groups, job control, and tty handling. If you are already a Linux programmer, this book covers confusing topics clearly and will make many of your programming tasks easier. Nearly every chapter will stand alone for you, because you already possess the essential knowledge of Linux on which they are based. No matter how experienced you are, you will find material here that you will appreciate having at your elbow.This book is different from typical Unix programming texts because it is unabashedly specific to a particular operating system. We do not try to cover all the differences between different Unix-like systems; to do so would not be useful to Linux programmers, Unix programmers, or C programmers unfamiliar with Linux or Unix. We know from our own experience that once you learn how to program well for any Unix-like system, the others are easy to learn.This book does not coverallthe details of Linux programming. It does not explain the basic interface specified by ANSI/ISO C---other books do that quite well. It does not cover the wealth of other programming languages available for Linux, and it does not cover the graphical programming libraries that are identical no matter what system you are using. Instead, we point you to books that specialize in those areas. Without extraordinary verbosity, we cover the information you need to know to go from being a C programmer for another system, such as Windows, Macintosh, or even DOS, to being a C programmer for Linux.Linux Application Developmentis written in four parts: The first part introduces you to Linux---the operating system, license terms, and online system documentation. The second part covers the most important facets of the development environment---the compilers, linker and loader, and some debugging to