Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 14:54:43 -0700 (PDT) From: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> To: leo@talcom.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Learning C on FreeBSD... Message-ID: <199809162154.OAA12626@pau-amma.whistle.com> In-Reply-To: <19980916153308.53065@talcom.net>
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>Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 15:33:08 -0400 >From: Leo Papandreou <leo@talcom.net> >> The Kernighan/Ritchie book _is_ the authorative source for C. [I left the above in for emphasis; though I didn't write it, I tend to agree with the perspective. dhw] >You may as well pick up Programming in the Unix Environment by the >same authors, too. It will introduce you to the shell, make, sed, >awk, lex, yacc, etc. There is even a section on the unix text formatting >tools in case you want to document your programs to be understood by >the man command. >Slim, inexpensive and highly recommended. I *believe* that the above is intended to refer to _The UNIX Programming Environment_, by (Brian) Kernighan & (Rob) Pike. (It's also published by Prentice-Hall.) I also recommend it highly -- I've bought 3 copies of it so far (and am not inclined to loan that book out again), though it tends to be not very BSD-specific (the authors were at Bell Labs, after all), and is a little dated in some respects (mostly, in not referencing tools that have become in vogue since the book was written, such as Perl). The book also has a somewhat subtle bit of self-reference in the text; at the time I first encountered it, I had not yet actually had the opportunity to work with a UNIX system (March, 1985, if I recall correctly)... and I was sufficiently bemused/perplexed/puzzled by this that I wrote a note to the authors. A few weeks later, I received an envelope from AT&T Bell Labs with my note enclosed... and some writing (in blue ink), in which the writer indicated that yes, they had worked fairly hard to pull that bit of self-reference off... and thanking me for "careful reading". The signature appeared to be that of Brian Kernighan. (Last time I saw Rob Pike was, I believe, at a USENIX conference at the Town & Country, in San Diego a few years ago. As I recall, he was wearing red shoes....) Cheers, david -- David Wolfskill UNIX System Administrator dhw@whistle.com voice: (650) 577-7158 pager: (650) 371-4621 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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