file systems

Not only perfect book for people who try to start learning Unix system, but also great for reference if you are familliar with Unix and you just want a book that you can flip through when you forgot a command.

I had to port some Windows C/C++ code to Solaris and went to the bookstore hoping to find something that would bring me up to speed with the basic utilities and UNIX concepts from the perspective of a programmer. Bookstore shelves are usually crowded with books that deal with the admin part of Unix but good programming books are a tad harder to find.

The first few chapters about the commonly used utilities quickly taught me to navigate the system but a full 4 chapters are devoted to the shell - a general introduction, bsh, ksh and csh - which was too much for me. I skipped the ksh and csh chapters. Also the systems programming chapters goes into a lot of detail about files most of which I already knew. If you, like me are a Windows programmer making a transition to Unix, be prepared to wade through and often skip stuff you already know. The good thing however is that the writing style is lucid and clear and this book is an easy read. Introduction to file permissions(chown etc) is very well written. Examples are clear and well placed. The brief introductions to perl and awk are also useful.

Though the price is on the higher side, I think this book is a good buy. Its kept me interested and reading for over a week now and I must say I know so much more Unix for that. If it had been priced say 10-12 dollars lower, I might have given this baby a 4 on 5.

I have the first edition of this book, and used it in college. This book does a good job explaining the basics and some intermediate topics. I particularly enjoyed chapters on system programming and unix internals. Also, the book serves as a good reference.

Overall, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to start out with UNIX.