Interprocess Communications in Unix: The Nooks and Crannies - Softcover

Gray, John Shapley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0131868918 ISBN 13: 9780131868915

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1996

Synopsis

18689-0 Simply the clearest, most thorough guide to UNIX interprocess communications. When it comes to the UNIX interprocess communications, techniques that are essential to distributed, client/server computing, no other book offers this much depth-or this much clarity. Starting with the basics, Interprocess Communication in UNIX explains exactly what UNIX processes are, how they are generated, and how they can access their own environments. You'll begin by mastering fundamental topics like library functions and system calls, handling system error messages, and then learn about the UNIX processing environment, parent and child processes, and process groups. Simple communication techniques using signaling, lock files, and file locking are described in detail. Building carefully from basic to more advanced concepts, the book offers complete, easy-to-understand explanations of every widely used technique for UNIX interprocess communications, including: * Named and unnamed pipes * Message queues: creation, control, and operation * Semaphores and semaphore sets * Shared memory operations, mapping memory to files * Remote procedure calls * Sockets Learn how local function calls can be transformed into remote procedures; how to debug an RPC application, and how to use broadcasting to search for RPC services on remote systems. Understand all you need to know about sockets IPC using UNIX and ARPA Internet protocols. Throughout this book you'll find extensive examples, summary boxes and exercises to test your understanding. Whether you're a programmer or an advanced student, you'll be surprised how quickly this book can teach you sophisticated UNIX interprocess communication techniques.

About this title

From the Publisher

Beginning with the basics of what a process is, how a process is generated, and how a process accesses its own environment, this book details process communication techniques, starting with the basics of process communications, and proceeding to the complexitites of socket- based comunications.

From the Back Cover

Understanding processes is fundamental to understanding UNIX. This book zeroes right in on the key techniques of processes and interprocess communication (IPC) - from primitive communications to the complexities of sockets.Loaded with examples and illustrations that clarify each technique, Interprocess Communications in UNIX covers topics like: beginning and ending processes; using fork and exec together; using primitive communications; and working with both named and unnamed pipes. Learn how to create message queues; use remote procedure calls (RPCs); create and access semaphore sets; and create shared memory segments. Once you attain a thorough mastery of interprocess communication methodologies, using POSIX threads you'll learn communications techniques for multithreaded applications. Learn to handle multiple threads in both single and multiple processes. From beginning to end, the book truly leads you through the "nooks and crannies" of UNIX - making you a dramatically more effective programmer. Rave reviews! "I really like this book!!! Concepts that I only vaguely understood now make complete sense to me! The sample code and exercises are so good, they seem to clamp down on the concepts like a vise grip..." S. Lee Henry, Johns Hopkins University.All UNIX system administrators, system programmers and computer science students.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0131868918
• ISBN 13: 9780131868915
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 364