Hi:

I have started to refresh my UNIX programming skills.  I have the book
Advanced programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens ,
first edition.  I have noticed that there is a second edition out
there.  From browsing the table of contents, the major updates are some
new chapters on threading and network printing.

Would I be wasting my time looking at the first edition for chapters
that do not seem to have changed?

Thank You

Matthew

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Matthew wrote:
> Hi:
>
> I have started to refresh my UNIX programming skills.  I have the book
> Advanced programming in the UNIX Environment by W. Richard Stevens ,
> first edition.  I have noticed that there is a second edition out
> there.  From browsing the table of contents, the major updates are some
> new chapters on threading and network printing.
>
> Would I be wasting my time looking at the first edition for chapters
> that do not seem to have changed?
>
> Thank You
>
> Matthew
>
It would not be a waste of your time.  I have both editions and while I
haven't read the 2nd one too closely, what it does have in addition to
the extra/replaced chapters is an updated platform/os support list for
many of the functions.  However even in the 2nd edition his linux
testbed is 2.4.22.  I think just about all the basics are the same.

One thing that is lacking is that most, if not all the IPC covered in
the book is still Sys V.  I myself prefer Posix IPC - which is covered
in the Steven's UNIX Network programming Vol 2.  I thought it might have
made it into this edition since I think it's gained in popularity.

Joe

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Joe Georger <jgeorger@ll.mit.edu> wrote:
> It would not be a waste of your time.  I have both editions and while I
> haven't read the 2nd one too closely, what it does have in addition to
> the extra/replaced chapters is an updated platform/os support list for
> many of the functions.  However even in the 2nd edition his linux
> testbed is 2.4.22.  I think just about all the basics are the same.

Linux 2.4.22 is reasonably stable, widely-used and appropriate, given
the timeframe within which the book was updated - compare with Solaris 9
which fit the same measure.  Ditto FreeBSD 5.2.1 - the one disparity
seems to be Darwin 7.4.0, which iirc is some months older than the other
three.

--
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net

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