Index
A
-a option, 243
Abstraction, 102–103
Access Control Lists (ACLs), 471
Accidental complexity, 299–300
Ada, 328
Adams, Scott, 53
Ad-hoc code generation, 225–229
for ascii displays, 225–227
generating HTML code for a tabular list, 227–229
Adhocity trap, 297
ADOS, 65
Advanced shell programming, 325
Aegis, 368–369
AF_INET socket family, 173
Agile programming, 477–478
AIX, 77
Allen, Paul, 36
AmigaOs, 67
ANSI C, 11
Apache, 9, 48, 49, 108, 131, 172, 175, 336, 426, 440, 446
Applets, 339
Application programming interfaces (APIs), 8, 16, 58, 70, 85, 150, 402
Application protocol, 173
Application protocol design, 123–127
Application protocol metaformats, 127–132
CDDB/freedb.org database, 129
classical Internet application metaprotocol, 127–128
HTTP, 128–129
Arnold, Ken, 21, 34, 88, 115, 171, 173
fusion with Unix culture, 45–47
Art of Computer Programming, The (Knuth), xxxii, 23
Artificial intelligence, 14
ash, 244
ASR-33 teletype, 30
Assemblers, 14
at, 275
AT&T, 32–33, 35, 37, 40–42, 61, 176. See also System V Unix
Bell Labs, 30–36
divestiture, impact of, 6
and XENIX, 35
atd, 275
Attitude, 26–27
autoheader, 447
Automated version control, 366
awk, 75, 89, 112, 183, 200–202, 244, 330, 354
B
-b option, 243
Backup scripts, 166
bash shell, 71
bc, 165, 183, 187, 203–205, 262–264
BCPL, 395
Bechtolsheim, Andreas, 36
BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol), 130–131
netlib code, 196
Bellovin, Steven M., 330
Berkeley Unix, 35–36
Berners-Lee, Tim, 299
Bernstein chaining, 167–168
bib, 195
Big-endian, 98
BIND, 183
binhex, 245
Blaauw, Gerrit, 98
Blivet trap, 297
blq, 333–334
BNF (Backus-Naur Form), 355
bogofilter, 218
bootpd, 172
Bostic, Keith, 41
Brooks, Fredrick P., 14, 87, 98, 215
Brooks’s Law, 86
Browser DOM, 206
BROWSER environment variable, 240
BSD Class License, 457–458
BSD sockets, 39, 89, 90, 176, 182, 400, 463, 464
BSD Unix, 4, 41, 43, 49, 90, 171, 175–176, 388, 402. See also Berkeley Unix
and reliable signals, 173
version 4.2, 35
bsh, 244
Bug tracking, 365
Byte-stuffed payload, 127–128
C
-c option, 244
C language, 5, 11, 16, 19, 22, 26, 30, 32, 36–37, 45, 70, 84, 88–89, 103, 106, 209, 323–325, 334, 338, 409–410
early history of, 395–396
evolution of, 394–398
fetchmail, 327
portability of, 409–410
standards, 396–398
as “thin glue”, 98–99
C programming, 12
C++ language, 22, 37, 56, 89, 98–99, 106, 191, 209, 238, 322–325, 327–300, 334, 337–349, 353, 356–357, 370, 384, 397, 410
portability of, 410
Qt toolkit, 329–330
Caldera, 43
Cantrip pattern, 268
Case studies, xxx–xxxi
Casual programming:
for MVS, 74
and Unix, 60–61
cc, 269
cdda2wav, 276
CDDB/freedb.org database, 129
cdrecord, 276
cdrtools, xxx
CGI (Common Gateway Interface), 228, 282–284
Change tracking, 365
Checklist features, 17
checkpassword, 167
Christensen, Clayton, 52
ci, 246
Clarity, 14–15
Clark, Alexander, 231
Classical Internet application metaprotocol, 127–128
clear, 268
CLI server, 123
Client, 59
clone, 466
CMS Pipelines, 75
co, 246
Code, 11
clarity of, 14–15
Code generation, 215–229
ad-hoc code generation, 225–229
for ascii displays, 225–227
generating HTML code for a tabular list, 227–229
data-driven programming, 216–225
ascii, 217–218
defined, 216–217
fetchmailconf, metaclass hacking in, 219–225
statistical spam filtering, 218–219
Codebase size, 297
Coherent, 37
COLUMNS environment variable, 239
Comer, Douglas, 33
Command-line interfaces (CLIs), 58–59
Command-line options, 242–248
-a option, 243
-b option, 243
-c option, 244
-d option, 244
-D option, 244
-e option, 244
-f option, 244–245
-h option, 245
-i option, 245
-I option, 245
-k option, 245
-l option, 245–246
-m option, 246
-n option, 246
-o option, 246
-p option, 246
portability to other operating systems, 248
-q option, 246
-R option, 246–247
-r option, 246–247
-s option, 247
-t option, 247
-u option, 247
-v option, 247
-V option, 247
-w option, 247
-x option, 247–248
-y option, 248
-z option, 248
"Communications of the ACM", paper, 33
Compactness, 84, 87–89, 202, 225
and the strong single center, 91, 92–94
Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS), 29, 234
Compiler pattern, 269
Compilers, 14
Complexity, 295–317
accidental, 299–300
compromise, 312–314
ed, 304–305
essential, 299–300
interaction with helper subprocesses, 303
interface and implementation complexity, tradeoffs between, 298–299
mapping, 300–302
optional, 299–300
output parsing, 303
plain-text editing, 302
problems, identifying, 309–312
rich-text editing, 302–303
Sam editor, 306–307
software, right size of, 316–317
sources of, 296–298
syntax awareness, 303
vi editor, 305–306
Wily editor, 308–309
Complexity level, choosing, 207–208
Composition, rule of, 13, 15–16
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network, 332
Concision, of interface designs, 257–258
Concurrent Version System (CVS), 367–368
condredirect, 167
Configuration, 231–252
command-line options, 242–248
control information in startup-time environment, 233–234
environment variables, 238–242
portability to other operating systems, 242
system, 238–239
user, 240
when to use, 240–242
methods:
choosing among, 248–252
fetchmail, 249–250
XFree86 Server, 251–252
run-control files, 234–238
.netrc file, 236–237
portability to other operating systems, 238
Conventions, used in book, xxix–xxx
Cookie-jar format, 115–116
Cooperating processes, 55–56
Cooperative multitasking, 54–55
Costello, Joseph, 417
cpio, 245
csh, 92
csplit, 247
CSSC (Compatibility Stupid Source Control), 367
ctags, 104
Culture, 3–4
CUP, 355
Custom grammar, writing, 210
Cygwin, 70
CTSS. See Compatible Time-Sharing System
D
-d option, 244
-D option, 244
Da Vinci, Leonardo, 253
Daemons, 170
fetchmail, 172
Data file metaformats, 112–123
cookie-jar format, 115–116
defined, 112
DSV style, 113–114
record-jar format, 116–117
RFC 822 format, 114–115
Unix textual file format conventions, 120–122
Windows INI format, 119–120
XML, 117–119
Data vs. program logic, 215–216
Data-driven programming, 216–225
ascii, 217–218
defined, 216–217
fetchmailconf, metaclass hacking in, 219–225
statistical spam filtering, 218–219
date, 476
dbx, 371
dc, 165, 183, 187, 203–205, 262–264
Dead code, 155
debugfs, 152
Debugging, 14
DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), 37, 40, 61, 75
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), 35
Delimiter-Separated Values (DSV), 113–114
Dependency derivation, 362
Designing for the future, 24–25
Detachment, value of, 94
df, 243
Discoverability, 18, 133–134, 258–259
coding for, 150–151
designing for, 148–149
Disruptive technology, 52
ditroff, 107
Diversity, rule of, 14, 24, 102
DLL hell problem, 70
document type definitions, 427–429
editing tools, 432–433
migration tools, 431–432
related standards/practices, 433
SGML, 433
toolchain, 429–431
writing Unix documentation, best practices for, 434–435
XML-DocBook references, 433–434
DocBook: The Definitive Guide (Walsh), 434
Documentation, 417–435
concepts, 418–420
cultural style, 421–422
formats, 422–426
Documenter’s Workbench tools, 422–424
HTML, 426
POD (Plain Old Documentation), 425
TeX, 424–425
Texinfo, 425
troff, 422–424
large-document bias, 420–421
Documenter’s Workbench (DWB) tools, 195–199, 204, 422–424
Domain-specific languages, 183–184
Don’t Repeat Yourself rule. See SPOT rule
Dormant code, 155
DSV style, 113–114
DTD (Document Type Definition), 429
DTSS, 78
du, 243
DVI (TeX Device-Independent format), 331, 430
Dynamically-linked libraries (DLLs), 100
E
-e option, 244
Ease, of interface designs, 257–258
ed pattern, 270
EDITOR environment variable, 240
Einstein, Albert, 295
Elegant code, 134
Elements of Programming Style, The (Kernighan/Plauger), 104
ELIZA program, 205
elvis, 351
Emacs, xxix, 16, 47, 106, 205, 235, 255, 272, 279, 307–308, 311, 314–315, 351–352, 437
combining tools with, 370–373
and make, 371
and profiling, 372
and runtime debugging, 371
and version control, 371–372
Emacs Lisp, 88–89, 187, 205, 342–343, 344, 369, 412
Emacs Lisp libraries, 134
Embedded scripts, 334
EMX, 67
Environment variables, 238–242
portability to other operating systems, 242
system, 238–239
user, 240
when to use, 240–242
EPSF, 203
EROS, 472
Essential complexity, 299–300
etags, 104
Ethernet, 4
ex, 247
Expressiveness, of interface designs, 257–258
Extending/embedding languages, 209
F
-f option, 244–245
f77, 245
faces, 247
Feldman, Stuart, 358–360
Fellowship theme, 31
fetchmail, xxx, 119, 155, 165–166, 172, 186, 200, 219–221, 229, 237, 243, 245–247, 249–250, 274, 327, 358, 359, 361
as a pipeline, 165–166
run-control syntax, 186, 199–200, 356
fetchmailconf, 219–225, 274, 338–339
metaclass hacking in, 219–225
File compression, 122–123
File servers, 464
File Transfer Protocol (FTP), 277
Filter pattern, 266–267
Filtering:
and discarded information, 267
and noise, 267
Filters, 15
find, 476
First Guide to Postscript (Web site), 202
Flex, 441
Flowcharting, 14
FO (Formatting Objects), 331, 430
FOP, 430–431
fork, 158
FORTH, 203
Fourth-generation languages, 14
Free Software Foundation, 46, 195, 326, 382, 432
Free Software Movement, 45–47, 49–51
Free Standards Group, 402–403
Freeciv, 174–175
data files, 146–148
FreeNet, 342
fsck, 248
fsdb, 152
FSF. See Free Software Foundation
ftpd, 277
Function-call overhead, 289
fuser, 247
G
Gabriel, Richard, 298–299
Galloway, Tom, 105
Gancarz, Mike, xxviii
gated, 172
Gates, Bill, 36
GCC (GNU C compiler), 47, 139–140, 382
GCOS, 78
Geeks, 44–45
GEM, 67
General Public License (GPL), 46, 458–459
Generated vs. hand-hacked code, 22
Generation, rule of, 13, 22–23
get, 244
getenv, 238
gettext, GNU, 413–414
getty, 244
Gettys, Jim, 7, 108, 181, 291, 407
GhostScript Project, 202
ghostview, 276
gif2png, 269
GIMP, xxx, 261, 279, 280, 281, 346, 383
plugins, 100–101
Glade, 185, 191–193, 353, 356–357
glob expressions, 188
glob facility, 93
Glue layers, 97–98
GNOME project, 66, 178, 315, 346, 383, 426, 476
GNU, 37, 39–40, 42, 48, 248, 270, 326
GNU Compiler Collection, 39, 326, 329, 384, 427, 439
GNU Emacs, 352
GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual, 343
GNU project, 39–40, 46–47, 248, 356, 422, 425, 440
GNU Texinfo, 432
GPL. See General Public License
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs), xxx, 15–16, 58, 79, 96, 97, 197, 256, 279, 281, 468, 476
grep, 93, 112, 119, 249, 256, 266, 354
grn, 195
grops, 247
gs, 276
Guile, 209
gv, 276
H
-h option, 245
Hackers, 5, 9, 10–11, 33–34, 37, 40–41, 43–51, 76, 84, 123, 155, 202, 272, 298, 305, 328, 332, 337, 344–345, 350, 404, 420, 440, 475, 478
origins/history of, 43–49
Hamming, Dick, 7
Hand-hacking, avoiding, 22–23
Harness program, 278
Hatton, Les, 183
head, 246
Heuristics, 93–94
High-level-language code, 22
HOME environment variable, 239
HP-UX, 77
HTML, 96–97, 205, 229, 281, 284, 331, 426
I
-i option, 245
-I option, 245
ibiblio, 384
IBM, 4, 10, 33, 36–37, 39–41, 43, 65–67, 72–76, 271, 395, 478, 495
alliance with Microsoft, 65
identify, 338
Idris, 37
IEEE-X, 400
IETF. See Internet Engineering Task Force
ifconfig, 246
imake, 363
Imgsizer, 338
InfoZip, 383
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), 399–400
Intel, 43
calculator program, writing, 262–264
CLI and visual interfaces, tradeoffs between, 259–262
configurability, 264–266
expressiveness, 264–266
interface design, evaluating, 257–259
Rule of Least Surprise, applying, 254–255
Rule of Silence, 284–285
transparency, 264–266
Unix interface design, history of, 256–257
Unix interface design patterns, 266–280
applying, 280–281
cantrip pattern, 268
CLI server pattern, 278–279
compiler pattern, 269
ed pattern, 270
filter pattern, 266–267
language-based patterns, 279–280
polyvalent-program pattern, 281
roguelike pattern, 270–271
"separated engine and interface" pattern, 273–278
sink pattern, 269
source pattern, 268
Web browser as universal front end, 281–284
Internal boundaries, 57
Internationalization, 413–414
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), 44, 49
Printer Working Group, 129
and RFC standards process, 403–405
Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), 129–130
Internet Standards Process (Revision 3), 404
Internet technical culture, 10
Interprocess communication (IPC), 55, 158
Introspection, 222
J
Jabber, 131
Jack, 355
Java, 22, 50–51, 66–67, 70, 88–89, 96, 106, 131, 187, 207, 209, 222, 282–283, 311, 324, 337, 339–342, 369, 411–412
FreeNet, 342
Native Method Interface, 339
portability, 411–412
Java Applets page, 385
JavaScript, 96, 187, 205–207, 281
JCL (Job Control Language), 73
Johnson, Steve, 10, 84, 208, 232–233, 276, 290, 354, 395, 396, 397, 468
Jolitz, William, 41
Joy, Bill, 35–36
Jython, 337
K
-k option, 245
Kay, Alan, 461
KDE project, 179, 315, 383, 426, 476
Kernighan, Brian, 5, 14, 259, 335, 395
Khosla, Vinod, 36
ksh, 244
L
-l option, 245–246
Lampson, Burt, 26
Language vs. application protocol, 212–213
Language-based interface patterns, 279–280
Lasermoon, 401
Law of Software Envelopment, 313
Least Surprise, rule of, 13, 20, 134, 197, 210, 253, 255, 285
applying, 254–255
Lesk, Mike, 24, 99, 262, 354, 419
lex, 93, 183, 185, 210, 352, 353–356
LGPL, 388
Libraries, 99–100
LINES environment variable, 239
Linux operating system, 4, 6, 7–8, 41–43, 48–51, 61, 65–67, 72, 76–79, 100, 117, 119, 134, 152, 155, 158, 172, 175–176, 178, 207, 241, 248, 251, 256, 269, 280, 331, 402, 440
archives, 384
as a cultural phenomenon, 41–43
kernel, 383
Red Hat, 429–430
Sorcerer GNU/Linux, 332
Linux Standards Base (LSB), 402
Lion, John, 34
Lisp, 16, 22, 30, 46, 88, 194, 222, 337, 343
Little-endian, 98
Live code, 155
Lock file, 171
LOGNAME environment variable, 238
lpd, 275
M
-m option, 246
Mac Interface Guidelines, 64
Macintosh, 475–477
culture, convergence with Unix culture, 477
MacOS, 4, 50, 62, 64–65, 176, 242, 248, 329, 333, 335, 338, 341, 346, 347, 351, 409–410, 471, 476–477
Macros, 210–212
Mail transport agent (MTA), 124
MAILER environment variable, 240
Maintainability, designing for, 154–155
make, 89, 183, 197, 246, 357–364
basic theory of, 357–358
for document-file translation, 359
generating makefiles, 362–364
autoconf, 363–364
automake, 364
imake, 363
makedepend, 362–363
in non-C/C++ development, 359
utility productions, 359–362
makedepend, 362–363
man macros, 88–89
man pages, 432
Manularity trap, 297
Mapping complexity, 300–302
Marshalling, 106
MATLAB, 290
McCarthy, John, 30
McIlroy, Doug, 5, 7, 11–12, 17, 21–22, 30, 32, 49, 55, 56, 77, 90, 92–93, 161–162, 177, 212, 232, 250, 267, 314, 322, 450
McKusick, Marshall Kirk, 41, 61
mdoc, 422
Memory management unit (MMU), 57, 63, 69, 71
Metaclass hacking, 222–223
Metcalf, Robert, 4
MICAHI, 232
Microsoft, 36, 40, 47, 65–66, 67, 70, 72
Windows, 10, 50, 75, 78–79, 146, 176
Windows NT, 68–71
Minilanguages, 183–213
applying, 187–199
awk, 200–202
bc and dc, 203–205
complexity level, choosing, 207–208
custom grammar, writing, 210
extending/embedding languages, 209
language vs. application protocol, 212–213
macros, 210–212
Documenter’s Workbench (DWB) tools, 195–199
Emacs Lisp, 205
fetchmail run-control syntax, 199–200
Glade, 191–193
JavaScript, 205–206
m4, 193–194
PostScript, 202–203
regular expressions, 188–191
basic, 188
examples, 189
extended, 188
glob expressions, 188
operations, 190
Perl, 189
sng, 187–188
spectrum of, 186
taxonomy of languages, 185–187
XSLT, 194–195
MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, 44
MIT or X Consortium License, 388, 457
mkisofs, 276
mm, 422
Moded interface, 305–306
Model/view/controller pattern, 273–274
coding for, 103–104
compactness, 87–89
and the strong single center, 92–94
encapsulation, 85–87
libraries, 99–100
optimal module size, 85–87
orthogonality, 89–91
SPOT rule, 91–92
Moodss system, 336
Moore’s Law, 287
mountd, 172
Mozilla Public License (MPL), 388, 459
MPE, 78
MPL. See Mozilla Public License
ms, 422
MTS, 78
Multics, 29–32, 44, 61, 74–75, 78, 438
Multics Emacs: The History, Design, and Implementation (Greenberg), 308
Multiprogramming, 157–182
bc and dc, 165
Bernstein chaining, 167–168
complexity control, separating from performance tuning, 159–160
defined, 157
fetchmail, as a pipeline, 165–166
filters, 162–166
mutt mail user agent, 161
peer-to-peer interprocess communication, 169–176
fetchmail’s use of signals, 172
shared memory, 175–176
signals, 170–171
sockets, 172–175
system daemons and conventional signals, 172
tempfiles, 169–170
pic2graph, 164–165
pipes, 161–166
piping to a pager, 163
problems/methods to avoid, 176–181
obsolete Unix IPC methods, 176–178
remote procedure calls (RPCs), 178–180
threads, 180–181
process partitioning at the design level, 181–182
process spawning, 158
redirection, 162–166
slave processes, 168–169
scp and ssh, 169
specialist programs, handing off tasks to, 160–161
Unix IPC methods, taxonomy of, 160–161
word lists, making, 164
wrappers, 166
backup scripts, 166
security wrappers, 167–168
Multitasking, 54–55
cooperative, 54–55
preemptive, 55
Multitrack editing, 136
mv, 465
MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage), 72–74
N
-n option, 246
named, 172
Named pipes, 163
NetBSD, 76
NFS (Network File System), 178
nfsd, 172
No Silver Bullet (Brooks), 300
Noncompact designs, 89
Nonlocality, 290–291
Novell, 43
nsgmls, 247
NUMA (non-uniform memory access), 290
O
-o option, 246
O notation, 288
Object-oriented programming (OO), 101–103
Obsolete Unix IPC methods, 176–178
System V IPC, 177
od, 247
Olsen, Ken, 40
"On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace", paper, 98
On the Design of Application Protocols (Rose), 127
Open Software Foundation (OSF), 40
Open source, 39, 41–43, 47–52, 61, 65, 67, 70–72, 76–77, 79, 117, 130–131, 146, 155, 174–175, 178, 191, 194–196, 201–203, 205–206, 209, 251, 256, 280, 284, 290, 298, 322, 324, 326, 328, 329, 332, 340–341, 344–346, 350, 355, 357, 359, 362, 367–369, 372–373, 380–390, 399, 401–402, 408–410, 412–415, 424, 426–427, 437–459
license selection, 456
licensing, 457–459
Artistic License, 458
BSD Class License, 457–458
General Public License, 46, 458–459
MIT or X Consortium License, 457
Mozilla Public License, 459
Open Source Definition (OSD), 7, 386–387, 457
seeking legal assistance, 390
software, issues in using, 385
standard licenses, 388–390
using, 457
and Unix, 438–440
working with developers, 440–456
communication practice, 454–456
development practice, 447–450
distribution-making practice, 450–454
patching practice, 440–444
project- and archive-naming practice, 444–447
OpenBSD, 76
Open-source community, 9
Open-source movement, 49–51
Operating systems:
binary file formats, 58
comparisons, 61–78
Linux, 76–78
MacOS, 64–65
MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage), 72–74
OS/2, 65–67
VM/CMS, 74–76
VMS, 61–64
Windows NT, 68–71
elements of style, 53–61
entry barriers to development, 60–61
file attributes, 57–58
intended audience, 59–60
internal boundaries, 57
inter-process communication (IPC), 55
multitasking, 54–55
preferred user interface style, 58–59
record structures, 57–58
Optimal module size, 85–87
Optimization, 287–294
choosing to do nothing, 287–288
measuring before, 288–290
nonlocality, 290–291
throughput vs. latency, 291–294
batching operations, 292
caching operation results, 293–294
overlapping operations, 293
Optional complexity, 299–300
Orthogonality, 84, 87, 89–91, 93–94, 99, 225, 301, 305
OS/2, 65–67
Ossana, Joseph, 417
Ousterhout, John, 411
Output parsing, 303
P
-p option, 246
Packard, Keith, 47, 117, 407–408
PAGER environment variable, 240
Palladium, 475
Parser/lexer generators, 23
Pascal, 324
PassiveTeX, 430
passwd, 245
paste, 113
patch, 38, 39, 42, 93, 437, 441
Paterson, Tim, 36
PATH environment variable, 239
Pattern Language, A (Alexander), xxxii
PDF. See Portable Document Format
PDP computer Web FAQ, 30
PDP computers, 123
PDP-1, 44
PDP-7, 30–32
PDP-10, 37, 44–45. See also TOPS-10 and TOPS-20
PDP-11, 32, 34, 40, 84, 98, 395, 481
Peer-to-peer interprocess communication, 169–176
fetchmail’s use of signals, 172
shared memory, 175–176
signals, 170–171
sockets, 172–175
system daemons and conventional signals, 172
tempfiles, 169–170
perl, 244
Perl, xxvi, 22, 39, 49, 75, 88–89, 103, 187, 201–202, 209, 228, 311, 332–334, 338, 369, 410
blq, 333–334
keeper, 334
portability, 410
Perl XS, 339
pic, 164–165, 183, 195–199, 210
pic2plot, 199
pidfile, 171
Pike, Rob, 12, 19, 23, 154, 288, 466
pine, 272
Pipes, 11, 36, 45, 55, 56, 58, 75, 107, 158, 161–166, 176, 197, 242, 267, 278, 466
Piping to a pager, 163
Plain-text editing, 302
Plan 9 from Bell Labs, 306, 308, 312, 464–466, 471–472
Plugins, 100
GIMP, 100–101
PLY, 355
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file format, 111–112, 130, 142–144, 152, 154, 185, 187, 269, 339, 414
POD (Plain Old Documentation), 425, 426, 432
poll, 182
Polyvalent-program pattern, 281
popen, 168
popfile, 218
C language:
early history of, 395–396
evolution of, 394–398
standards, 396–398
and choice of language, 409–412
C, 409–410
C++, 410
Emacs Lisp, 412
Java, 411–412
Perl, 410
Python, 410–411
shell, 410
Tcl, 411
internationalization, 413–414
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and RFC standards process, 403–405
and open standards/open source, 414–415
programming for, 408–413
system dependencies, avoiding, 412–413
tools for, 413
Unix standards, 398–403
in the open-source world, 402–403
and Unix wars, 398–401
Portability layer, 449
Portable Document Format (PDF), 420, 426, 430
Portable Operating System Standard (IEEE), 8
POSIX, 8, 39–40, 67, 71, 170, 175–176, 181, 188–189, 326, 398, 400–401, 414, 469
Postel, Jonathan, 21
Postel’s Prescription, 21, 267
PostgreSQL, 174
postmaster, 277
PostScript, 164, 186, 202–203, 331, 420, 426, 431
pppd, 172
pr, 247
Preemptive multitasking, 55
Presentation-level markup, 419
Principle of Least Astonishment, 20
Procedural programming, 14
Process spawning, 158
Profiling, 370
Programmer time, conserving, 22
Protocol family, 173
Prototyping, 23–24
PS/2 port, 39
PyChecker, 448
Python, xxvi, 22, 75, 88–89, 106, 187, 209, 228–229, 244, 311, 327, 333, 336–339, 369, 383, 410–411
fetchmailconf, 338–339
home page, 384
imgsizer, 338
portability, 410–411
Python Imaging Library (PIL), 339
Python interpreter, 293–294
Python Software Activity, 456
Q
-q option, 246
QDOS, 36
qed editor, 304
qmail, 275
qmail POP3 server, 167
qmail-popup, 167–168
qmail-smtpd, 168
QNX, 37
R
-r option, 246–247
-R option, 246–247
Race condition, 171
Rationale for the Structure of the Model and Protocol for the Internet Printing Protocol, 129–130
rblsmtpd, 167–168
read, 177
Record-jar format, 116–117
Redirection, 162–166
Refactoring, 90–91
refer, 195
Registry creep, 69
Regular expressions, 188–191
basic, 188
examples, 189
extended, 188
glob expressions, 188
operations, 190
Perl, 189
rehash directive, in csh, 92
Remote procedure call (RPC), 68, 178–180
Repair, rule of, 13, 21–22, 147, 154, 252
Representation, rule of, 13, 19–20, 102
Requests for Comment (RFCs), 44
Reuse, 375–390
moving to open source, 380–381
new programmers, 376–379
and transparency, 379–380
Revision Control System (RCS), 367
Rexx scripting language, 66, 75
RFC 822 format, 114–115
rfork, 466
Rich-text editing, 302–303
Ritchie, Dennis, 5, 30–33, 34, 36, 49, 98–99, 161, 177, 395
rm, 268
Robustness, rule of, 13, 18–19, 154
Roguelike pattern, 270–271
Rootless Root, 499–509
Rule of Clarity, 13, 102, 154–155
Rule of Composition, 13, 15–16
Rule of Diversity, 14, 24, 102
Rule of Extensibility, 14, 24–25
Rule of Least Surprise, 13, 20, 134, 197, 210, 253, 255, 285
applying, 254–255
Rule of Minimality, 316
Rule of Modularity, 13, 84, 85, 159
Rule of Optimization, 14, 23–24
Rule of Repair, 13, 21–22, 147, 154, 252
Rule of Representation, 13, 19–20, 102
Rule of Robustness, 13, 18–19, 154
Rule of Silence, 13, 20–21, 284–285
Rule of Simplicity, 13, 17, 102, 178
Rule of Transparency, 13, 18, 19, 102, 151, 264
Run-control files, 234–238
.netrc file, 236–237
portability to other operating systems, 238
Russell, Bertrand, 183
S
-s option, 247
SAIL, 44
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de, 99
Samba, 426
Sandboxed languages, 207
Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), 35, 43
Santayana, George, 29
Saxon, 429
Scheme, 279
scp, 169
screen, 470
Scriptability, of interface designs, 257–259
Scripting languages, xxx, 112, 122, 166, 183, 187–188, 201–202, 204, 209, 226, 321–324, 337–338, 344, 359, 410
sdb, 371
Security wrappers, 167–168
select, 182
Semi-compact designs, 88
sendmail, 183–184, 193, 275, 277
"Separated engine and interface" pattern, 273–278
client/server pair, 277–278
configurator/actor pair, 274
driver/engine pair, 275–277
spooler/daemon pair, 275
Separation, rule of, 13, 16–17
Server, 59
setuid bit, 159
shar, 247
Shared culture, xxv
Shared memory, 175–176
SHELL environment variable, 239
Shell:
languages, 22
portability, 410
programs, 330–332
Sorcerer GNU/Linux, 332
xmlto, 331–332
Shelling out, 160
Signal handler, 170
Silence, rule of, 13, 20–21, 284–285
Simplicity, rule of, 13, 17, 102, 178
Single Point of Truth. See SPOT rule
Single Unix Specification, 175, 401
Sink pattern, 269
Slave processes, 168–169
scp and ssh, 169
SNA (Systems Network Architecture), 73–74
SNG (Scriptable Network Graphics format), 142–144, 154, 185
snmpnetstat, 246
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), 131, 179
Freeciv, 174–175
PostgreSQL, 174
Software engineering, 3–4
Software-development methodologies, 14
Sorcerer GNU/Linux, 332
Source Code Control System (SCCS), 367
Source pattern, 268
SPACEWAR, 44
spambayes, 218
Spencer, Henry, 3, 15, 19, 20, 100, 107, 145, 153, 204, 216, 250, 264, 354, 365, 376, 397, 415, 439, 469
Sponge, 269
SPOT rule, 91–92, 220, 224, 293, 301
ssh, 169
Stallman, Richard (RMS), 37, 39, 45–47, 48, 51, 314, 400
startx, 268
stat, 449
Stephenson, Neal, xxv
STL (Standard Template Library), 328
Structured programming, 14
Subversion, 368–369
Sun Community Source License (SCSL), 340
Sun Microsystems, 36–38, 40, 42, 50, 178, 339, 345, 399
Network Window System (NeWS), 256
Syntactic sugar, 200
Syntax awareness, 303
system, 160
System III Unix, 90, 171, 367, 396, 398
System V Unix, 37–38, 171, 176–178, 238, 299, 395, 398–400, 462. See also AT&T
T
-t option, 247
tail, 246
Tales of Zen Master Greg, 500
Tao of Programming, The, 499
Tao Te Ching, 375
Tcl, 22, 131, 186, 187, 209, 212, 228, 279, 281, 322, 327, 333, 334–339, 342–347, 369, 371, 394, 410, 411
expect package, 212
Moodss system, 336
portability of, 411
TkMan, 336
tcpdump, 246
TCP/IP, 8–9, 35, 36, 66, 73–74, 174, 176, 178, 239, 278, 462, 463
TECO, 184
TERM environment variable, 239
termcap capability format, 144
terminfo, 145–146
Terminfo database, 144–146
Texinfo, 425
Text streams, 15
Textuality, 105–131
application protocol design, 123–127
application protocol metaformats, 127–132
CDDB/freedb.org database, 129
classical Internet application metaprotocol, 127–128
HTTP, 128–129
data file metaformats, 112–123
cookie-jar format, 115–116
defined, 112
DSV style, 113–114
record-jar format, 116–117
RFC 822 format, 114–115
Unix textual file format conventions, 120–122
Windows INI format, 119–120
XML, 117–119
file compression, 122–123
importance of, 107–109
Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), 129–130
BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol), 130–131
Jabber, 131
SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), 131, 179
marshalling, 106
.newsrc format, 110–111
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) file format, 111–112, 185
Unix password file format, 109–110
unmarshalling, 106
Textualizers, 152
Thin-glue principle, 97–98
Thompson, Ken, 4, 5, 16, 23, 24, 30–32, 34–35, 37, 60, 84, 98–99, 104, 139, 155, 161, 203, 304, 395, 466, 472
Threads, 180–181
Throughput vs. latency, 291–294
batching operations, 292
caching operation results, 293–294
overlapping operations, 293
Throwing an exception, 470
Timeless Way of Building (Alexander), xxxii
Timesharing operating systems, 61–62
tin, 272
Tk, 409
Tk toolkit, 334
TkMan, 336
Toolkits, 256–257
Tools, 349–373
developer-friendly operating system, 349–373
editors:
choosing, 350–353
Emacs, 351–352
using both vi and Emacs, 352
vi, 351
Emacs:
combining tools with, 370–373
and make, 371
and profiling, 372
and runtime debugging, 371
and version control, 371–372
make, 357–364
autoconf, 363–364
automake, 364
basic theory of, 357–358
for document-file translation, 359
generating makefiles, 362–364
imake, 363
makedepend, 362–363
in non-C/C++ development, 359
utility productions, 359–362
profiling, 370
runtime debugging, 369
special-purpose code generators, 352–357
fetchmailrc grammar, 356
Glade, 356–357
lex, 353–356
yacc, 353–356
version control:
Aegis, 368–369
automated, 366
Concurrent Version System (CVS), 367–368
by hand, 365
purpose of, 364–365
Revision Control System (RCS), 367
Source Code Control System (SCCS), 367
Subversion, 368–369
systems, 364–369
Unix tools for, 367–369
Top-down vs. bottom-up design, 95–97
TOPS-10, 78
Torvalds, Linus, 41, 47, 48–49, 406, 437
touch, 268
Transparency, 133–155
case studies:
audacity, 135–136
fetchmail, -v option, 136–139
Freeciv data files, 146–148
GCC (GNU C compiler), 139–140
kmail, 140–144
Terminfo database, 144–146
of code, 150–151
of designs, 148–149
and discoverability, 133–134, 148–151
editable representations, 152–153
fault diagnosis, 153–154
fault recovery, 153–154
of interface designs, 257–258
maintainability, designing for, 154–155
overprotectiveness, avoiding, 151–152
rule of, 13, 18, 19, 102, 151, 264
Zen of, 149–150
troff, 89, 107, 183, 186, 197, 199, 246, 261, 417, 421, 422–424
markup, 89
Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, 474–475
TSO, 73
Turing-complete languages, 187, 201, 205
U
-u option, 247
ucspi-tcp, 168
uNETix, 37
Unix:
APIs, 90
application programming interface (API), 8
basic philosophy, 11–14
binary file formats, 58
and casual programming, 60–61
code, 11
code generation, 215–229
complexity, 295–317
configuration, 231–252
cross-platform portability, 8
culture:
case against learning, 5–6
expertise transmitted by, 11–12
problems in, 475–477
data file metaformats, 112–123
documentation, 417–435
concepts, 418–420
cultural style, 421–422
formats, 422–426
large-document bias, 420–421
durability/adaptability of, 4–5
environment, problems in, 473–475
attributes, 57–58
deletion, 6
flexibility of, 9–10
fusion with ARPANET culture, 45–47
future of, 461–478
heritage of, 6
history of, 29–43
lessons learned from, 51–52
interfaces, 253–285
styles, 7
internal boundaries, 57
inter-process communication (IPC), 55
job control, 6
koans of Master Foo, 499–504
language evaluations, 325–343
C language, 326–327
C++, 327–330
Emacs Lisp, 342–343
Java, 339–342
Perl, 332–334
Python, 336–339
shell programs, 330–332
Tcl, 334–336
languages, 321–347
C language, 323–325
cornucopia of, 321–322
future trends, 344–345
interpreted languages, 325
minilanguages, 183–213
modularity, 83–104
multiprogramming, 157–182
multitasking, 54–55
objections to, 6–7
and object-oriented languages, 101–103
open source, 437–459
open standards, 8
open-source applications, 9
as open-source software, 7–8
operating system, elements of style, 53–61
optimization, 287–294
options, 7
origin of, 29–30
applying, 26
compared to others, 53–80
portability, 393–417
preferred user interface style, 58–59
record structures, 57–58
reuse, 375–390
specification level, 215–229
textuality, 105–131
tools, 349–373
transparency, 133–155
and universality, 6
use of term, xxix
Version 7 release, 34
X toolkit, choosing, 346–347
Unix interface design, history of, 256–257
Unix interface design patterns, 266–280
applying, 280–281
cantrip pattern, 268
CLI server pattern, 182, 278–279
compiler pattern, 269
ed pattern, 270
filter pattern, 266–267
language-based patterns, 279–280
polyvalent-program pattern, 281
roguelike pattern, 270–271
"separated engine and interface" pattern, 273–278
client/server pair, 277–278
configurator/actor pair, 274
driver/engine pair, 275–277
spooler/daemon pair, 275
sink pattern, 269
source pattern, 268
Unix System V. See
Unix textual file format conventions, 120–122
Unmarshalling, 106
unzip, 245
URI (Universal Resource Indicator), 128
URL (Uniform Resource Locator), 9, 128
Usenet, 35, 42, 110, 114, 205, 272, 305, 343, 383, 440, 451, 455, 495, 497
USER environment variable, 238
User-interface design, 140, 475
Utility productions, 359–362
UUCP, 35
uupc, 247
V
-v option, 247
-V option, 247
Validating parser, 428
VAX/VMS operating system, 10, 35, 367
Venix, 37
Version control:
Aegis, 368–369
automated, 366
by hand, 365
purpose of, 364–365
Subversion, 368–369
systems, 364–369
Unix tools for, 367–369
Concurrent Version System (CVS), 367–368
Revision Control System (RCS), 367
Source Code Control System (SCCS), 367
vi, 35, 247, 272, 311, 351, 352
vile, 351
vim, 351
W
-w option, 247
Waterfall model, 406
wc, 162
who, 268
Wily editor, 308–309
Window manager, 257
Windows operating system, 10, 40, 50, 66, 67, 75, 77–79, 100, 113, 135, 146–147, 152–153, 171, 173, 175, 176, 179, 181, 193, 207, 238, 242, 248, 252, 256–257, 265, 324, 329, 340, 349–352, 367, 409–410, 412, 450, 453
Windows Help markup, 426
Windows INI format, 119–120
Windows NT, 68–71
Wittgentstein, Ludwig, 321
Workplace Shell (WPS), 66
World Wide Web (WWW), 8–9, 42, 281, 476
"Worse Is Better", paper (Gabriel), 298, 438
backup scripts, 166
security wrappers, 167–168
write, 177
X
-x option, 247–248
X clients, 251
X servers, 251
X toolkit, 191
choosing, 346–347
X windowing system, 7, 47, 49, 63, 108, 183, 463
and XFree86, 42
Xalan, 429
xcalc, 262–263
xdb, 371
XEmacs, 352
XENIX, 35
Xerox PARC, 256, 273, 461, 463, 467–468, 480
XF86Config file, 251–252
XHTML, 426
XML, 117–119, 196, 205, 284, 331, 463
XML Cover Pages, 434
XML-DocBook, 426
xmllint, 147
xmlroff, 431
xmltk toolkit, 118–119
xmlto, xxx-xxxi, 331–332, 425–426, 429, 435
X/Open, 401
xsltproc, 429–430
xvi, 351
Y
-y option, 248
yacc, 10, 93, 183, 185, 210, 352, 353–356
Yacc/M, 355
ypbind, 172
Z
-z option, 248
zcat, 248
Zen, xxix, 13, 149–150, 225, 287, 317, 477
and value of detachment, 94