C is what the world is breathing today. And Books on C are filling book shelves like believers converging on a Holy bank. But here's a Pilgrimage that's a different kind of voyage. The C Odyssey. Written in a easy, riveting and readable style, the book touches heights that few have reached, and offers insights that Nobody has divined. The C Odyssey is for (hose who'd like to Learn C and for those who have learnt C. Garnished with small programs, followed by in-depth explanations, the journey takes the beginner by the hand, breaking him into the mold, taking him up to a point, and letting him free to explore on his own. The platform covered is wide and diverse. From C under DOS to C under UNIX, Windows, OS/2, and its interfaces with networking and relational databases. The Odyssey has a seven stop itinerary. Unserialized and distinct, but threaded by thin silken Bonds to each other. The saga is a lengthy one, through lands that have been visited separately before. Speaking the same Language from different podiums, they abet an undisrupted flow of thought. Odyssey 3 : UNIX-The Open, Boundless C. : UNIX is the much maligned, debated and devoured entity today. An operating system that was possible only through C, it has always been dealt with rather cursorily. Most C Under Unix Books merely skimmed the surface, instead of cashing in on the opportunity to take a trip down to the Philosophy of C, so easily reached through UNIX. This volume takes you through the innards, questioning the gist of internal data structures like stat, ustat, suid-bit control, file and record-level locking, IPCs like pipes, named pipes, semaphores, shared Memory and message queues. The Summit is reached with a fairly detailed inquiry into curses. The graphical Face in UNIX, a very low profile GUI. Contents Introduction I. Unix : THE MULTI-TASKING OPERATING SYSTEM : 1. Multi-tasking 2. Background Process 3. Process Identification 4. Parent and Child 5. The 'Fork()' 6. Orphan Process 7. Zombies 8. A "Sleeping Beauty" Process 9. Process Synchronization 10. Core Dump 11. Back to the ‘Fork()' 12. Sharing Data Between Processes Using Files 13. File Buffering 14. The 'Exec()' Function 15. Terminal and File Buffering 16. The 'Execv()' Function 17. The 'Execvp()' Function 18. Environment Block 19. The 'Exec()’ Called through A fork()' II. UNIX : THE MULTI-USER OPERATING SYSTEM : 1. Booting Up 2. UNIX Copyright 3. User Details 4. Group ID 5. Time 6. Process Group ID 7. Why, Background Processes 8. A Tribute to Cuckoo's Nest 9. UNIX's View Of Disks and Devices 10. Root File System : i. Boot Block ii. Super Block iii. Inode Table iv. Data Blocks 11. File Permissions 12. Data Security and the 'Suid' Bit 13. Links III. ON FILES : 1. Unlocked Confusion 2. One at a Time Please 3. Explicit Unlocking 4. A Sign to Ease the Suspense 5. F_TEST Will Tell Us 6. Read Inconsistency 7. Range Locking 8. Action Stations...Deadlock !!! 9. System Lock Table 10. More Control Over a File 11. Permissions and File Locking 12. Conclusion IV. COMMUNICATING ACROSS PROCESSES : 1. Signals 2. Signal Handling 3. Illegal Instruction Handling 4. About 'SIGHUF 5. About 'SIGCLD' 6. About 'SIGALRM' 7. KILL!! 8. Open Signals 9. Pipes 10. ‘Lseek()'and Pipes 11. Many Processes and One Pipe 12. Sorting Using Pipes 13. The 'Popen()' 14. Named Pipes 15. Conclusion : Signals and Pipes 16. Message Queues 17. Creating a Message Queue 18. Queue Permissions 19. UNIX's Queue Numbering System 20. Information about the Queue 21. Sending A Message 22. And Now to Receive A Message 23. Message in A Bottle 24. A Sense of Priority 25. The Queue for Telecommunication 26. A Printer Spooler 27. Conclusion : Message Queues 28. Semaphores 29. Creating A Semaphore 30. Semaphore Exclusivity 31. Intricacy of Semaphore Permissions 32. Getting and Setting Semaphore Values 33. Who is Using the Resource ? 34. Atomicity through Structures 35. Semaphore Arithmetic 36. Don't Let an Unsuccessful 'Semop()' Stop Us 37. The Importance of Resetting 38. Semaphore Structures 39. Down Memory Lane 40. Conclusion : Semaphores 41. Shared Memory 42. Creating A Shared Memory Segment 43. The Amoeba Devours 44. Hardware and Shared Memory 45. Getting Rid of the Segment 46. Changing User ID and Group ID of Segment 47. Just A Shared Memory Segment Away 48. Conclusion : Shared Memory V. THE LEFTOVERS : 1. The 'Mknod()' 2. The 'Nice()’ 3. The 'Clock()' 4. The 'Ulimit()’ 5. The ‘Fcntl()' 6. The ‘Ftw()' 7. The 'Access()’ 8. The 'clearerr()’ 9. The ‘Memccpy()' 10. The Memset()’ 11. The 'Mktemp()’ 12. The 'Getpass()' 13. About 'Setjmp()'and ‘Longjmp()’ 14. The ‘Ioctl()' 15. Conclusion VI. ON CURSES : 1. About Curses 2. Switching to ETI 3. Enter, A Character 4. From Characters to Strings 5. BEEP...’Beep() 6. Do Not Disturb! 7. Fooling Around With the Cursor 8. Cosmetic Changes 9. Enter, the Window 10. Windows On the Move 11. Eating 'Em RAW 12. Having Fun With Attributes 13. About Ourselves and How Fast We are 14. Controlling the Cursor 15. The Screen