June 2005
Intermediate to advanced
960 pages
23h 41m
English
book
Advanced Programming in the UNIX® Environment: Second Edition
by W. Richard Stevens, Stephen A. Rago
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Chapter 6. System Data Files and Information
Introduction
A UNIX system requires numerous data files for normal operation: the password file /etc/passwd and the group file /etc/group are two files that are frequently used by various programs. For example, the password file is used every time a user logs in to a UNIX system and every time someone executes an ls -l command.
Historically, these data files have been ASCII text files and were read with the standard I/O library. But for larger systems, a sequential scan through the password file becomes time consuming. We want to be able to store these data files in a format other than ASCII text, but still provide an interface for an application program that works with any file format. The portable interfaces ...
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I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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