UNIX System Programming

INTRODUCTION

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January 21, 2012

 User UNIX Interface: SHELL
2
Provides command line as an interface
between the user and the system
Is simply a program that starts
automatically when you login
Uses a command language
 Allowsprogramming (shell scripting) within
the shell environment
 Uses variables, loops, conditionals, etc.
 Accepts commands and often makes system
calls to carry them out

January 21, 2012

 Various UNIX shells
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sh (Bourne shell)
ksh (Korn shell)
csh (C shell)
tcsh
bash
Differences mostly in scripting details

January 21, 2012

 The Korn Shell (ksh)
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We will be using ksh as the standard shell for
examples in this class
Language is a superset of the Bourne shell
(sh)

January 21, 2012

 Login scripts
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You don’t want to enter aliases, set
environment variables, set up command
line editing, etc. each time you log in
All of these things can be done in a script
that is run each time the shell is started
For ksh:
 ~/.profile - is read for a login shell
 ~/.kshrc
For tcsh
 ~/.login
 ~/.cshrc

January 21, 2012

 Example .profile (partial)
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# set ENV to a file invoked each time sh is started

for interactive use.
ENV=$HOME/.shrc; export ENV
HOSTNAME=`hostname`; export HOSTNAME
PS1="$USER@$HOSTNAME>"

alias 'll'='ls -l'

alias 'la'='ls -la'
alias 'ls'='ls -F'
alias 'rm'='rm -i'
alias 'm'='more'

set -o vi
echo ".profile was read"

January 21, 2012

 stdin, stdout, and stderr
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Each shell (and in fact all programs)
automatically open three “files” when they
start up
 Standard input (stdin): Usually from the keyboard
 Standard output (stdout): Usually to the terminal

 Standard error (stderr): Usually to the terminal

Programs use these three files when reading

(e.g. cin), writing (e.g. cout), or reporting
errors/diagnostics

January 21, 2012

 Redirecting stdout
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Instead of writing to the terminal, you can tell
a program to print its output to another file
using the > operator
>> operator is used to append to a file
Examples:
 man ls > ls_help.txt
 Echo $PWD > current_directory
 cat file1 >> file2

January 21, 2012

 Redirecting stderr
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Instead of writing errors to the terminal,
you can tell a program to write them to
another file using the:
 ksh: 2> operator
 tcsh: >& operator
Examples (suppose j is a file that does not
exist)
{ajax} ls j
ls: j: No such file or directory
{ajax} ls j >& hello.txt
{ajax} cat hello.txt
ls: j: No such file or directory
January 21, 2012
 Redirecting stdin
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Instead of reading from the terminal, you can

tell a program to read from another file using
the < operator
Examples:
 Mail user@domain.com < message
 interactive_program < command_list

January 21, 2012

 Pipes and filters
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Pipe: a way to send the output of one

command to the input of another
Filter: a program that takes input and
transforms it in some way
 wc - gives a count of words/lines/chars
 grep - searches for lines with a given string

 more

 sort - sorts lines alphabetically or

numerically
January 21, 2012
 Examples of filtering
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ls -la | more

cat file | wc
man ksh | grep “history”
ls -l | grep “dkl” | wc
who | sort > current_users

January 21, 2012

 UNIX Tutorial
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http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/
Google will give you many links

January 21, 2012

 UNIX Filesystem
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The filesystem is your interface to

 physical storage (disks) on your machine
 storage on other machines
 output devices
 etc.

Everything in UNIX is a file (programs,

text, peripheral devices, terminals, …)
There are no drive letters in UNIX! The
filesystem provides a logical view of the
storage devices

January 21, 2012

 Working directory
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The current directory in which you are

working
pwd command: outputs the absolute path
(more on this later) of your working directory
Unless you specify another directory,
commands will assume you want to operate
on the working directory

January 21, 2012

 Home directory
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A special place for each user to store personal

files
When you log in, your working directory will
be set to your home directory
Your home directory is represented by the
symbol ~ (tilde)
The home directory of “user1” is represented
by ~user1

January 21, 2012

 UNIX file hierarchy
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Directories may
bin users tmp
contain plain files
or other directories
dkl kangli
Leads to a tree
structure for the
filesystem foo.txt csci1730
Root directory: /
bar.c abcd

January 21, 2012

 Path names /
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Separate directories
bin users tmp
by /
Absolute path
 start at root and follow the dkl kangli
tree
 e.g. /users/dkl/foo.txt

foo.txt csci1730
 Relative path
 start at working directory bar.c abcd
 .. refers to level above; . refers to working dir.
 If /users/dkl/csci1730 is working dir, all these
refer to the same file
../foo.txt ~/foo.txt ~dkl/foo.txt
January 21, 2012
 Types of files
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Plain (- in the first bit)

 Most files
 Includes binary and text files

Directory (d)
A directory is actually a file
 Points to another set of files

Link (l): A pointer to another file or

directory
Special: e.g. peripheral devices

January 21, 2012

 Creating links
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ln –s <curr_file> <link_name>

This command creates a symbolic link
The file “link_name” will be a pointer to the
“curr_file” which may be in another directory or
even on another physical machine

January 21, 2012

 File permissions
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Permissions used to allow/disallow access to

file/directory contents
Read (r) 4, write (w) 2, and execute (x) 1
For owner, group, and world (everyone)
chmod <mode> <file(s)>
 chmod 700 file.txt (only owner can read,
write, and execute)
 chmod g+rw file.txt

January 21, 2012

 Looking at file contents
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cat <filename(s)>
 “concatenate”

 output the contents of the file all at once

more <filename(s)>
 Output the contents of a file one screen at a time
 Allows forward and backward scroll and search

January 21, 2012

 Getting help on UNIX commands
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These notes only give you the tip of the

iceberg for these basic commands
man <command_name> shows you all the
documentation for a command
apropos <keyword> shows you all the
commands with the keyword in their
description

January 21, 2012

 The UNIX System
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Kernel – Heart of the OS

 Process scheduling

 I/O control (accesses)

Shell – Interpreter between the user and the

computer
Tools and applications
 Accessible from shell
 Can be run independently of shell

January 21, 2012

 UNIX System Programming
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Programs make system calls (also called

supervisor calls to invoke kernel.
A system call is essentially a procedure call into
the operating system
 The procedure call is protected
Types of system calls
 File I/O
 Process management
 Inter-process communication (IPC)
 Signal handling

January 21, 2012

 System Calls (Library calls)
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System calls
 Interface to the kernel

Program
Code
Library fread

User Space read user

read
kernel
Kernel Space
January 21, 2012
 Basic file I/O
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Processes keep a list of open files

Files can be opened for reading, writing
Each file is referenced by a file descriptor
(integer)
Three files are opened automatically
 FD 0: standard input
 FD 1: standard output
 FD 2: standard error

January 21, 2012

 File I/O system call: open()
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fd = open(path, flags, mode)

path: string, absolute or relative path
flags:
 O_RDONLY - open for reading
 O_WRONLY - open for writing
 O_RDWR - open for reading and writing
 O_CREAT - create the file if it doesn’t exist
 O_TRUNC - truncate the file if it exists
 O_APPEND - only write at the end of the file

mode: specify permissions if using O_CREAT

January 21, 2012

 File I/O system call: close()
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retval = close(fd)
Close an open file descriptor
Returns 0 on success, -1 on error

January 21, 2012

 File I/O system call: read()
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bytes_read = read(fd, buffer,

count)
Read up to count bytes from file and place
into buffer
fd: file descriptor
buffer: pointer to array
count: number of bytes to read
Returns number of bytes read or -1 if error

January 21, 2012

 File I/O system call: write()
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bytes_written = write(fd, buffer,

count)
Write count bytes from buffer to a file
fd: file descriptor
buffer: pointer to array
count: number of bytes to write
Returns number of bytes written or -1 if error

January 21, 2012

 System call: lseek()
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retval = lseek(fd, offset, whence)

Move file pointer to new location
fd: file descriptor
offset: number of bytes
whence:
 SEEK_SET - offset from beginning of file
 SEEK_CUR - offset from current offset location
 SEEK_END - offset from end of file

Returns offset from beginning of file or -1

January 21, 2012

 UNIX File access primitives
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open – open for reading, or writing or create an

empty file
creat - create an empty file
close –
read - get info from file
write - put info in file
lseek - move to specific byte in file
unlink - remove a file
remove - remove a file
fcntl - control attributes assoc. w/ file

January 21, 2012

 File I/O using FILEs
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Most UNIX programs use higher-level I/O

functions
 fopen()
 fclose()
 fread()
 fwrite()
 fseek()

These use the FILE datatype instead of

file descriptors
Need to include stdio.h

January 21, 2012

 Using datatypes with file I/O
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All the functions we’ve seen so far use raw

bytes for file I/O, but program data is usually
stored in meaningful datatypes (int, char,
float, etc.)
fprintf(), fputs(), fputc() - used to
write data to a file
fscanf(), fgets(), fgetc() - used to read
data from a file

January 21, 2012

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January 21, 2012