Don Marti

Thu 23 Jun 2005 12:00:00 AM PDT

Johnson and Troan, Linux Application Development

At my home office, I have a big bookcase with in the corner. One shelf is half full of CDs, one shelf is mostly full of Plano plastic boxes full of fasteners, small computer parts, and doo-dads. The rest is books. I also have a few shelves that are easy to reach from the desk. So I'm figuring out which of the books to put on the smaller shelves.

Book number one: Linux Application Development by Michael K. Johnson and Erik W. Troan. This is the book that strikes the perfect balance between "d3wd, this works for me" and "here's the belt-and-suspenders way to work around all the weird sort-of-standard stuff on every God-awful Un*x back to the beginning of time".

All hail section 12.7.2: "Sending Data With A Signal". One more direct hit in this book's unbroken history of exactly what I need to write code that actually works (for me), and I'm not a professional C programmer, just an editor. I actually read the first edition, but the second edition just follows me around and shows me helpful sample code when I need it.