Book Description
This practical reference guides programmers developing Linux applications or porting applications from other platforms. Linux is fundamentally similar to Unix-so, much of the book covers ground familiar to Unix programmers-but this book consistently addresses topics from a Linux point of view. The aim throughout is to provide the detailed information you need to take full advantage of Linux.

If you are already a proficient Unix programmer, this book will greatly facilitate your transition to Linux. You will also find helpful discussions of some tricky Unix topics, such as process and session groups, job control, and tty handling.

If you are a C programmer, but know neither Unix nor Linux, reading this book in its entirety and working with its numerous examples will give you a solid introduction to Linux programming.

If you are already a Linux programmer, this book's clear treatment of advanced and otherwise confusing topics will surely make your programming tasks easier.

Linux Application Development is divided into four parts. Part 1 introduces you to Linux(the operating system, licenses, and documentation. Part 2 covers the most important aspects of the development environment(the compilers, linker, loader, and debugging tools. Part 3-the heart of the book-describes the interface to the kernel and to the core system libraries, including discussion of the process model, file handling, directory operations, signal processing (including the Linux signal API), job control, the POSIX( termios interface, sockets, and the Linux console. Part 4 describes important development libraries with interfaces more independent of the kernel. The source code from the book is freely available at http://www.awl.com/cseng/books/lad/.

Pt. 1	Getting started	1
Ch. 1	History of Linux development	3
Ch. 2	Licenses and copyright	11
Ch. 3	Online system documentation	19
Pt. 2	Development tools and environment	23
Ch. 4	Development tools	25
Ch. 5	gcc options and extensions	43
Ch. 6	The GNU C library	49
Ch. 7	Memory debugging tools	59
Ch. 8	Creating and using libraries	79
Ch. 9	Linux system environment	91
Pt. 3	System programming	103
Ch. 10	The process model	105
Ch. 11	Simple file handling	155
Ch. 12	Signal processing	203
Ch. 13	Advanced file handling	241
Ch. 14	Directory operations	293
Ch. 15	Job control	325
Ch. 16	Terminals and pseudo terminals	335
Ch. 17	Networking with sockets	407
Ch. 18	Time	481
Ch. 19	Random numbers	497
Ch. 20	Programming virtual consoles	501
Ch. 21	The Linux console	513
Ch. 22	Writing secure programs	531
Pt. 4	Development libraries	553
Ch. 23	String matching	555
Ch. 24	Terminal handling with S-lang	569
Ch. 25	A hashed database library	583
Ch. 26	Parsing command-line options	597
Ch. 27	Dynamic loading at run time	619
Ch. 28	User identification and authentication	627
App. A	Header files	649
App. B	ladsh source code	651