Yet Another Book List (YABL)
Sam Bassett RCD
samlb at pioneer.arc.nasa.gov
Tue Dec 19 17:33:07 AEST 1989
It has been a little over a month since I posted a copy of this
list, and I see that there are questions about "what book..." again, so
here it is -- with a disclaimer:
{Note: This list is a collection of capsule book reviews taken from the
comp.unix.questions newsgroup over the past couple of years -- the
opinions expressed are those of the original reviewers, who posted them to
c.u.q. -- I have NOT read all of these books, nor do I necessarily have
an opinion on them. I trust that the posters are expert enough to know
what they are/were talking about, however!
S.B.Bassett, Collector}
================Intros & Overviews=================
>The UNIX Programming Environment
Author: Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1984, 357 pages, ISBN 0-13-937699-2, paperback: 0-13-937681-X
- This book is what I call a classic. Just buy it.
- a good programmer's introduction.
>The Unix Environment
Author: A.N.Walker.
- An excellent user's introduction. I have a special affection for
this book, as it introduced me to the plural forms VAXen and Unices.
>Introducing The UNIX System
Author: Henry McGilton and Rachel Morgan
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Book Company
1983, 556 pages, ISBN 0-07-045001-3
- introductory for the most part, but far more extensive than Gauthier's
book. There are two chapters on editors and two on text formatting
that are the best I have seen in this type book. There is even a
chapter on system management. I believe there may be a new edition
of this book out that has been substantially rewritten.
>The Design of the Unix Operating System
Author: Maurice J. Bach
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
- is a good generic introduction to kernel operation. (System V)
>UNIX Shell Programming
Author: Stephen G. Kochan and Patrick H. Wood
Publisher: Hayden Book Company
1985, 422 pages
- I own this book, but I rarely crack it open. I guess the main
reason is that I am still a Bourne-again shell user. For years I
worked with a variety of systems where one might find csh and/or ksh.
However, /bin/sh was the only common denominator. I find that most
often I refer to Kenighan and Pike for shell programming questions.
However, they don't address the C Shell (csh) or Korn Shell (ksh).
This book does offer a chapter on each. In addition, this book may
be more suited for a beginner than an experienced UNIX programmer.
>O'Reilly and Associates series of Nutshell Books for UNIX.
Available by mail order from
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
981 Chestnut Street
Newton, MA 02164
or uunet!ora!nuts or 1-800-338-NUTS
The "Learning the UNIX Operating System" is a local favourite.
>Unix Shell Programming
Lowell Jay Arthur
Wiley Interscience 1986
ISBN 0-471-83900-0 LC 85-22623 261 pp
>UNIX The Complete Reference, Osborne-McGraw Hill, 1988.
An inexpensive reference and guide to System V in a style
familiar to those from the micro world where OMH and QUE
have many best selling guides to Lotus, DOS, Word, etc.
>An Introduction to Berkeley UNIX by Paul Wang, 1988.
A guide to the Berkeley world. I mention it as a counter to
the previous book...there are very few BSD UNIX only texts.
>Life With UNIX
Author: Don Libes and Sandy Ressler
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1989, pp 350. ISBN 0-13-536657-7.
- A comprehensive overview of UNIX. Major sections are:
UNIX in Time - Usual trash plus history of user groups,
universities, with a comprehensive "who's who" in
UNIX history. Present & Future deals with where
UNIX is now and where its going - companies,
standards and dialects are treated at length.
UNIX Information - How people really learn about UNIX.
Discussion of books, magazines, conferences, and, of
course, source code.
Inside UNIX - In-depth descriptions of UNIX from three
different perspectives - user, programmer and
adminstrator.
Outside UNIX - Third-party stuff. Discussions of how UNIX
has prospered/withered in face of real-world problems.
Underground - archives, USENET, public access UNIX,
GNU, MINIX, public-domain and/or free software, etc.
This book is quite unusual, not only because of its scope, but
because it prints things that have never appeared in print (for one
reason or another) - things that most people don't realize or find
until years after they have used UNIX. It is essentially a
"reading between the lines" of all the other UNIX manuals, books
and magazines. Lastly, "Life With UNIX" is chock full of amusing
UNIX stories and anecdotes, all designed to provide you with key
insights into why UNIX is the way it is. "Life with UNIX" is a
must book for UNIX beginners to UNIX gurus.
>A Practical Guide to the Unix System
Mark G. Sobell
Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Co.
Menlo Park, CA 1984
ISBN 0-8053-8910-5 LC 83-21069 428pp
Frank W. Peters <peters at apple!CC.MsState.Edu> adds:
"I have two books that I'd recommend adding to your list:
System Administration:
Title: UNIX System Administration Handbook
Author: Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder and Scott Seabass
Pub: Prentice-Hall
ISBN: (unknown)
This is a pretty good book and worth noting because it leans toward BSD.
Networking:
Title: UNIX Networking
Author: Stephen Kochan and Patric Wood
Pub: Hayden Books
ISBN: 0-672-48440-4
An excellent book covering UUCP, TCP/IP, NFS, RPC, Streams, OSI, RFS, X11 and
NeWS (Sun's postscript based graphical protocol). Each chapter serves as an
excellent programmers introduction to the topic discussed."
================Berkeley=================
>An Introduction to Berkeley Unix
Author: P. Wang
Publisher: Wadsworth.
- If you need a BSD oriented book, then I don't think you would find a
more thorough introductory book.
>The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix Operating System
Author : Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels,
John S. Quarterman.
Publisher :Addison-Wesley (Berkley and SunOS)
1988
- seems to be a good book on kernel design for Berkeley Unix; I just
started it myself.
- We should be hearing about this one any day now!!! John Quarterman
had informed me quite some time ago to expect this one in September.
These are the primary people who are responsible for 4.3 BSD.
================System V=================
>A Practical Guide to Sys V Unix
Author: Mark Sobell.
Publisher: Benjamin Cummings
- ( I am not sure if this is the exact title)
>UNIX System V Bible
Author: Stephen Prata and Donald Martin
Publisher: Howard Sams & Company
>Introducing UNIX System V
Rachel Morgan & Henry McGilton
1987 McGraw-Hill
It gives the user a good working knowledge of a number of commands
and packages. I emphasize that it is a user book, by no means a
technical manual. I assume by the difficulty in getting it in these
parts that it is pretty popular.
>Unix Communications.
Andersson, Costales and Hendersson.
The Waite Group 1987.
Covers everything the enduser needs to know about email, USENET
and UUCP.
>Unix Administrations Guide for System V.
Thomas / Farrow
Prentice-Hall 1989.
Bought this book last week, seems to me to be the most
comprehensive and fact-packed book on the subject I've ever seen.
Lars Tunkrans
>UNIX for Super-Users
Eric Foxley
International Computer Science Series,
Addison-Wesley,1985
================A System for the NeXT of us=================
>Threads of a New System
Author: Prof Richard Rashid
in the August 1986 _Unix Review_
- an excellent introduction to the design of Mach, the sort-of
object-oriented Unix which runs on the NeXT machine.
================Geeks, Gurus & Wizards=================
>Advanced UNIX: A Programmer's Guide
Author: Stephen Prata
Publisher: Howard W. Sams & Co., Indianapolis
1985, 484 pages, ISBN: 067-22403-8.
- Prata assumes you know how to login and use and editor. It's very
good for shell programing.
>Advanced UNIX Programming
Author: Marc J. Rochkind
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1985, 265 pages, ISBN 0-13-011818-4, paperback: 0-13-011800-1
- Rochkind is a former Bell Labs UNIX guru who wrote SCCS back in the
mid 70's. This book is exactly what the title states, basically an
extremely thorough treatment of programming using the UNIX System
Call Interface. System V, System III, V7, 4.2 BSD, and Xenix are
all discussed. The system calls are organized functionally into
chapters that cover file i/o, terminal i/o, process control,
interprocess communication, and miscellaneous calls. The opening
chapter is an overvview of fundamental concepts of UNIX. Anytime
I have a question on the usage of system calls I consult this book.
The only problem with it is that it needs to be updated per
System V Rel 3, 4.3 BSD and the efforts of Sun and AT&T to bring
SunOS and System V together as well as the efforts in the UNIX 386
world.
>Tricks of the UNIX Masters
Author: Russel G Sage
Publisher: Howard Sams & Co
ISBN 0-672-22449-6.
- a "must add" to your list of UNIX books. For about $20, you'll get a
lot of nifty little tricks & tips you won't pick up unless you've got
a good UNIX guru to coach you. The style is relaxed & aimed at a bit
above the novice UNIX user (experienced programmer with sparse UNIX
exposure).
>Unix System Administration
David Fiedler and Bruce H Hunter
Hayden Books (Howard Sams & Co) 1986
ISBN 0-8104-6289-3 320 pp
>UNIX System: Readings and Applications
Vol 1: UNIX Time-Sharing System
Vol.2: The UNIX System
Author: AT&T
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1987
- These two volumes are reprints of the two volumes of the Bell
Labs Technical Journal (now AT&T Tech J.) that were devoted to UNIX:
Vol. 57, No. 6, Part 2, July-August, 1987, and
Vol. 63, No. 8, October, 1984.
================C stuff=================
>The C Reference Manual, 2nd Ed.
Kernighan & Plaugher
The _new_ one . . .
>C: A Reference Manual, 2nd Edition
Author: Samuel P. Harbison and Guy L. Steele Jr.
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1987, 404 pages, ISBN 0-13-109810-1, paperback: 0-13-109802-0
- An excellent book on C. It is not really an introductory level book,
and is a great companion to K&R (2nd Ed.). Both this book and
K&R (2nd Ed.) cover the draft-proposed ANSI standards. Where H&S
really stands out is in the sections that cover the UNIX library
calls. If you have ever struggled with any of printf or scanf
family of library calls in trying to figure out the conversion rules
in the format string, this book is the answer.
>Efficient C
Author: Thomas Plum and Jim Brodie
Publisher: Plum Hall
1985, 150 pages, ISBN 0-911537-05-8
- This is a useful book. Portability is one aspect of programming
in C. Efficiency is the other. Many use C because it allows them the
freedom to tie the programs down to the hardware in order to run
efficiently. This book is an excellent guide and when combined with
Jon Bentley's book on writting efficient programs gives one an
excellent background in measuring programs and fine tuning them.
>Notes on the Draft C Standard
Author: Thomas Plum
Publisher: Plum Hall
1987, 92 pages, ISBN 0-911537-06-6
- Tom Plum is the Vice Chair of the ANSI X3J11 committee, so who
better to write this book than he? However, as with any of the
other C books that treat the ANSI C Standard, it does not cover the
Standard in it's final form due to the fact that it has yet to be
adopted. However, the price is about $10, so it makes a good pickup
to keep informed about the standard and how it differs from K&R C.
>The C Programmer's Handbook
Author: M.I. Bolsky
Publisher: AT&T Bell Labs and Prentice-Hall
1985, 84 pages, ISBN 0-13-110073-4
- This is a handbook for experience programmers, not a book for
reading. Information is intended as a quickie reference and is not
that detailed.
>The C Puzzle Book: Puzzles for the C Programming Language
Author: Alan R. Feuer
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1982, 173, ISBN 0-13-109934-5 paperback: 0-13-109926-4
- Exactly what the title indicates. The puzzles are organized by
chapter: basic arithmetic operators, assignment operators, logic and
increment operators, bitwise operators, relational and conditional
operators, operator precedence and evaluation. The answers for all
of the puzzles are also provided. This is an excellent way to learn
some of the more advanced expressions that can be concocted with C.
>The C Answer Book
Author: Clovis L. Tondo and Scott E. Gimpel
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1985, 209 pages, ISBN 0-13-109877-2
- This book provides the answers to the exercises found in K&R.
I believe that a second edition of this book has also been recently
published corresponding with the 2nd edition of K&R.
>C Traps and Pitfalls
Author: Andrew Koenig
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
1988, 147 pages, ISBN:201-17928-8
- Andrew published a BTL Technical Memorandum by this title several
years back. Later it was published as a Technical Report. It has
now been expanded into a book. I read the TR and it was excellent.
I just recently finished the book and would recommend it to anyone
who uses C.
>Portable C and UNIX System Programming
Author: J.E. Lapin
Publisher: Prentice-Hall
1987, 249 pages, ISBN 0-13-686494-5
- A useful book, mostly because there are no others written on
this topic, yet......
>How to Write Portable Software in C
Author: Mark Horton
Publisher: Prentice Hall
to be released.
- I'm waiting!
srvarma at rodan.acs.syr.edu ( ** The War Child **) says:
"This is an excellent piece of information, Sam. I, however, have two additions
to make to your list. They belong to the list of C books.
>Software Engineering in C.
Author: Peter Darnell, et al.
Year : 1988.
Publ. : Springer-Verlag.
One of the finest books I have seen for beginners. Highly recommended even
for intermediate-level C programmers.
>Data Structures and C Programs.
Author: Christopher Van Wyk.
Year : 1988.
Publ. : Don't know.
The author is from Bell Labs and this is also one of my favorite books for
learing C programming with different kinds of data structures."
================Misc/Unknown=================
>UNIX Papers for UNIX Developers & Power Users
Author: The Waite Group Editors
Publisher: Howard W. Sams & Co, Indianapolis
1987, 518 pages, ISBN: 0-672-22578-6.
- This is a collection of papers. Some of the them are introductions
and others cover more arcane bits of knowledge.
>Writing a Unix Device Driver
Author: Janet I. Egan and Thomas J. Teixeira
- Masscomp with appendixes on BSD and Xenix
>(no title given)
297 pages, ISBN 0-8359-8164-9, paperback: 0-8359-8162-2
- introductory level book, extremely basic and easy reading. I read
this on a plane trip between Newark, NJ and Columbus, OH before I
ever worked seriously with UNIX. Unlike, Rebecca Thomas and
Jean Yates Tutorial style book this one does not require you to be
sitting down in front of a crt in order to derive benefit from it.
>Unix for People
AUTHOR: Birns, Brown and Muster
PUBLISHER: Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.
>Unix Power Utilities for Power Users
AUTHOR: Muster, Birns and Lurnix
PUBLISHER: MIS Press, P.O. Box 5277, Portland, OR 97208, phone 1-800-MANUALS
>The AWK Programming Language
Aho, Kernighan, Weinberger
Addison Wesley 1988
ISBN 0-201-07981-X LC 87-17566 210 pp
>Unix Primer Plus
Waite,Martin and Prata
>Advanced Unix -- A Programmer's Guide
S.Prata
Published by Howard W Sams and Co. Available in
local bookstores or by contacting publisher at 1-800-428-SAMS.
==================Periodicals====================
Unix Review Magazine
Unix World magazine
Unix Today free newspaper
==============================================================================
Additions, subtractions, reviews and comments gratefully accepted!
Sam'l Bassett, Sterling Software @ NASA Ames Research Center,
Moffett Field CA 94035 Work: (415) 694-4792; Home: (415) 969-2644
samlb at well.sf.ca.us samlb at ames.arc.nasa.gov
<Disclaimer> := 'Sterling doesn't _have_ opinions -- much less NASA!'
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