Lions' Commentary on Unix

The most famous suppressed book in computer history! * Used as an Operating System textbook at MIT"After 20 years, this is still the best expostion of the workings of a 'real' operating system." --- Ken Thompson (Developer of the UNIX operating system)After years of suppression (as trade secrets) by various owners of the UNIX code, this tome has been re-released, and we owe a debt to all involved in making this happen. I consider this to be the single most important book of 1996. Unix Review, June 1997"The Lions book", cherished by UNIX hackers and widely circulated as a photocopied bootleg document since the late 1970's, is again available in an unrestricted edition. This legendary underground classic, reproduced without modification, is really two works in one: the complete source code to an early version (Edition 6) of the UNIX operating system, a treasure in itself! a brilliant commentary on that code by John Lionswith additional historical perspective essays added in 1996.Lions' marriage of source code with commentary was originally used as an operating systems textbook, a purpose for which it remains superbly well-suited (as evidenced by it's ongoing use at MIT).

Professor at University of New South Wales, spent a sabbatical at Bell Labs where he became friends with Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, the inventors of Unix. They shared the original UNIX source code with him, to the consternation of AT&T, and Prof. Lions wrote a brilliant commentary on that source code, that code and his commentary are this book (that educated generations of UNIX hackers and gurus).