|
|
The C programming language has not been described in this manual. C is provided as part of the SCO OpenServer Development System, and is most useful to professional programmers wishing to write high-performance software. Nevertheless, C is of vital importance to the programs described in this manual. The UNIX system has traditionally been written in C, and the shells and awk embody many of the constructs of the C programming language; awk in particular resembles a special-purpose subset of C that has been tuned for the purpose of text scanning. The influence of the C programming language is pervasive, and a lot of the superficially peculiar features of the UNIX system make much more sense when viewed with a working knowledge of this language.
Readers who wish to explore the UNIX architecture thoroughly or become programmers may want to learn C. The traditional starting place is the ``white book,'' The C Programming Language (Dennis Kernighan and Brian Ritchie; Second Edition, Prentice-Hall Software Series, 1988). The first edition of this book documents the original ``K&R'' dialect of the C programming language; the second edition has been updated to include the ANSI extensions to the language. The book contains a tutorial in C, followed by a detailed reference, a brief discussion of the UNIX system interface, and the standard library.
There are innumerable other books about C, but this one has the advantage of having been written by the author of the language; it is generally regarded as the standard text on the subject.