Berkeley UNIX: A Simple and Comprehensive Guide

a really good book! in less than 300 pages. it covers almost all you need to know about UNIX. shell programming,vi, emacs,c programming(make, ctrace,debug),sed, awk...... IMO, what make it UNIQUE, it is the third section on the UNIX system programming. a brief even but with full examples on ALL the system calls, File I/O, Signal, Process,IPC, Pipe.....even socket programming.

After I read this book, I feel very comfortable reading Steven's UNIX bible.

Seasoned UNIX users will have no use for this book at all. There is a brief (and i mean BRIEF) introduction to Socket programming at the end of the book, and a modest introduction to csh programming as well.

The reason I purchased this book is I have been spending a lot of time with BSD unix flavors (Open/Free BSD, old solaris), and wanted to get a grasp of how they were different from SysV. I wanted to know things like file placement, differences in the kernel, and so on.

This book provides none of it. Think of it as a primer users guide for unix. Not for somebody who is administrating machines.

On its face, I certainly wouldnt even say it was worth half its horrendous... price. its a flimsy paperback with little value to anyone who knows the ins and outs of vi, ls, cd, and the other basic unix commands.

Buy an OReilly book.