From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Aug 22 17:35:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id RAA12676 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 22 Aug 1997 17:35:02 -0700 (PDT) Received: from xmission.xmission.com (softweyr@xmission.xmission.com [198.60.22.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA12659 for ; Fri, 22 Aug 1997 17:34:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from softweyr@localhost) by xmission.xmission.com (8.8.5/8.7.5) id SAA22909; Fri, 22 Aug 1997 18:34:05 -0600 (MDT) From: Wes Peters - Softweyr LLC Message-Id: <199708230034.SAA22909@xmission.xmission.com> Subject: Re: Documentation for header files? To: stefan.veith@mail.online-club.de (Stefan Veith) Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 18:34:04 -0600 (MDT) Cc: questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199708221210.OAA23583@rpops002.rp-online.de> from "Stefan Veith" at Aug 22, 97 02:12:22 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I am quite new to FreeBSD (and Unix in general) and I want to continue C (++ > ) -programming in the BSD environment. That is why I have this question: Is > there any documentation for the header files because the man pages do not > say anything about these files and the files themselves are only poor > commented. I don't really understand what documentation you want on header files; header files simply declare typenames, data structures, and function prototypes for the various library functions and system calls. In general, header files that are needed to perform a function will be found in the "SYNOPSIS" section of the man page for the function. > And, in addition to that, I would like to know with the help of which header > file I can erase the screen, display boxes or coloured text (my Zortech > Compiler for DOS used disp.h). You can't do that with any header file. You can, however, do screen formatting using the "curses" library. Try the command "man 3 erase". I'd recommend a good book or two on UNIX programming to start with. A good start would be "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" by W. Richard Stevens, known around here as APUE. It has good examples and will introduce you to many of the functions of UNIX. You should also know about the command "apropos", also known as "man -k". Typing "apropos topic" or "man -k topic" will search the "NAME" section of the man pages for the topic you're looking for. I found references to the ncurses library under topics "clear", "erase", and "box." The man pages may seem a little terse at the beginning, and don't provide much in the way of examples, but they are *quite* complete. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com