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Book recommendations

Recommendations: STL

• I can highly recommend Ray Lischner's C++ in a Nutshell, which is not only a good reference on C++, but also and particulary on STL.
• Good to have this one on your desk. STL Pocket Reference.

Recommendations: GNU/Linux

• The Unix Programming Environment. The classic. Mainly for Unix enthusiasts and all people, who have good chances to become one. The book explains what a shell is, how to use it, goes into grep, sed, awk, explains the different input/output concepts, (stdout, stdin, redirection, pipes) and explains a bit about system calls. One can get more comprehensive books on the Unix Programming environment nowadays, but it is good to read this one.
• GNU/Linux Application Programming covers GNU development tools like gcc, gprof, objdump, nm, gcov. A introduction to some system programming topics is given as well. Sockets, pipes, threads, are covered. The book then moves on to the testing and debugging process. Gdb is covered along with some useful tools from the Unix development environment awk, sed & friends.
• GNU Emacs Manual. Written by the master himself, who invented it all. is more than just an editor. It can be used as one, but it combines lots of other application like emails frontends, www browsers, command line processor, calendar, ...
• Managing Projects with GNU Make Make is used to control the compile process and many more.

Recommendations: GNU gdb

• "Debugging with GDB: The GNU Source-Level Debugger". Richard Stallman and his co-authors have put everything togehter. How dow you start a debugging session, how do set breakpoints, how do you inspect stack, etc. A good book written by the people, who have created gdb.
• "The Art of Debugging with GDB and DDD" dicusses the use of ddd in addition to gdb as well.

Recommendations: g++

• Richard Stallman and other developers of gcc wrote a book on their baby. It is a reference manual that covers C, C++, Objective C, Java and libraries.
• "GNU C++ for Linux" is obviously focussing on Linux. Starting with installing Mandrake many topics are covered in this book. It is more a guide, that a reference manual.

Recommendations: C++

• Bjarne Stroustrup has probably written the best known book on C++. It is a bit of a hard read for a beginner, but still one of the best sources for C++ grammar and the features of the language.
• I can highly recommend Ray Lischner's "C++ in a Nutshell", which is not only a good reference on C++, but also and particulary on STL.

Recommendations: C Language

• The "Old Testament" The C Programming Language. 1st Edition. I am not sure, if it is still available in bookshops. I have a copy, but of course I would never give it away.
• The "New Testament" The C Programming Language. 2nd Edition. It contains all ANSI relevant rules and extension. For real work, it is the better choice anyway.
• A very good reference on the C - Standard Library is given in "C - A Reference Manual" (Harbison/Steele)

Recommendations: X11

• X Lib Reference is a good Reference on X11 lower level programming. If you want/need to dig very deep into the X11 library, this a must have. If you want to use a more powerful framework, you will not need it as this book is only vovering the lower layer aspects of X-Lib.
• OSF/MOTIF Programmer's Guide along with OSF/MOTIF Programmer's Reference explain the concepts of widgets and other building blocks of X11/Motif.

Recommendations: Sockets/Network Programming

There are not as many books on C++ system programming as there are on system programming with C. I present a few very good books here. I tried to get a complete coverage of all sysprog topics, without having too many books, which tell about one and the same thing.

• Richard Stevens Unix Network Programming has been a classic for many years. "Could you borrow me your Stevens, please?" is a phrase you hear quite often in developer labs. The book is good for Windows developers as well - not only because you can use Cygwin and "bypass" the Unix API - but also because lots of the System calls are industry standard (IEEE, POSIX).
  The book covers Berkely Sockets, System V Transport Layer Interface (TLI), many protocols and their implementation (RPC, telnet, rlogin, rmt, lpr)
• Marc J. Rochkind's Advanced Unix Programming is another classic, covering File I/O, Terminal I/O, Interprocess Communication, processes (exec(), fork(), wait(), ... ). This is book is more Unix specific, but still more than half of what you read in this book is valid for Windows programming as well.
• Practical Unix Programming is covering well Files, Timers, Threads (focusing on POSIX compliant threads), Thread Synchronisation, Client Server Processing, Remote Procedure Calls
• Comer and Stevens wrote a series of three books on Internetworking with TCP/IP. I am using Volume II and Volume III. Volume II (Design, Implmentation and Internals) tells about the concept of TCP/IP protocols. It gives details about the TCP finite state machine as well as about SNMP, multicasting, urgent data, ospf (routing protocol). This is not a real programmers book, it is exaplaining conceptually how network programming works, from client and server perspective and also from the operating systems perspective. A very good book.
• Volume III is more programming oriented. All aspects of client/server computing are covered with lots of details and examples and pracatical hints. It is a good follow up of Volume II. I assume Volume I is good as well, but I have not read it.
• Again Richard Stevens. TCP/IP Illustrated Vol 1. shows detailed message charts and state transition charts of many network protocols. IP, UDP, TCP, NFS, FTP, TFTP, BOOTP, DNS, SMTP, Telnet, Rlogin Protocols are explained in detail. Broadcasting, multicasting, message flows etc are also covered.

Recommendations: Curses

• I bought Programminh with curses a few years ago in a second hand book shop for very little money compared to the value of this book. It is a quite thin handbook, but it explains everything about curses, the window concept, "terminal independence", etc very well and gives a few examples at the end. All you need.

Recommendations: GNU gprof

• GNU/Linux Application Programming covers GNU development tools like gcc, gprof, objdump, nm, gcov. A introduction to some system programming topics is given as well. Sockets, pipes, threads, are covered. The book then moves on to the testing and debugging process. Gdb is covered along with some useful tools from the Unix development environment awk, sed & friends.

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Franz Brandel

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