Hands On: C/C++ Programming and
Unix Application Design:
UNIX System Calls and Subroutines using C,
Motif, C++

$\copyright$ A. D. Marshall 1998/9

Contents
The Common Desktop Environment
- The front panel
- The file manager
- The application manager
- The session manager
- Other CDE desktop tools
- Application development tools
- Application integration
- Windows and the Window Manager
- The Root Menu
- Exercises
C/C++ Program Compilation
- Creating, Compiling and Running Your Program
- The C Compilation Model
- Lint -- A C program verifier
- Exercises
C Basics
- History of C
- Characteristics of C
- C Program Structure
- Variables
  - Defining Global Variables
  - Printing Out and Inputting Variables
- Constants
- Arithmetic Operations
- Comparison Operators
- Logical Operators
- Order of Precedence
- Exercises
Conditionals
- The if statement
- The ? operator
- The switch statement
- Exercises
Looping and Iteration
- The for statement
- The while statement
- The do-while statement
- break and continue
- Exercises
Arrays and Strings
- Single and Multi-dimensional Arrays
- Strings
- Exercises
Functions
- void functions
- Functions and Arrays
- Function Prototyping
- Exercises
Further Data Types
- Structures
  - Defining New Data Types
- Unions
- Coercion or Type-Casting
- Enumerated Types
- Static Variables
- Exercises
Pointers
- What is a Pointer?
- Pointer and Functions
- Pointers and Arrays
- Arrays of Pointers
- Multidimensional arrays and pointers
- Static Initialisation of Pointer Arrays
- Pointers and Structures
- Common Pointer Pitfalls
  - Not assigning a pointer to memory address before using it
  - Illegal indirection
- Exercise
Dynamic Memory Allocation and Dynamic Structures
- Malloc, Sizeof, and Free
- Calloc and Realloc
- Linked Lists
- Full Program: queue.c
- Exercises
Advanced Pointer Topics
- Pointers to Pointers
- Command line input
- Pointers to a Function
- Exercises
Low Level Operators and Bit Fields
- Bitwise Operators
- Bit Fields
  - Bit Fields: Practical Example
  - A note of caution: Portability
- Exercises
The C Preprocessor
- #define
- #undef
- #include
- #if -- Conditional inclusion
- Preprocessor Compiler Control
- Other Preprocessor Commands
- Exercises
C, UNIX and Standard Libraries
- Advantages of using UNIX with C
- Using UNIX System Calls and Library Functions
Integer Functions, Random Number, String Conversion, Searching and Sorting: <stdlib.h>
- Arithmetic Functions
- Random Numbers
- String Conversion
- Searching and Sorting
- Exercises
Mathematics: <math.h>
- Math Functions
- Math Constants
Input and Output (I/O):stdio.h
- Reporting Errors
- Streams
  - Predefined Streams
    - Redirection
- Basic I/O
- Formatted I/O
  - Printf
- scanf
- Files
  - Reading and writing files
- sprintf and sscanf
  - Stream Status Enquiries
- Low Level I/O
- Exercises
String Handling: <string.h>
- Basic String Handling Functions
  - String Searching
- Character conversions and testing: ctype.h
- Memory Operations: <memory.h>
- Exercises
File Access and Directory System Calls
- Directory handling functions: <unistd.h>
  - Scanning and Sorting Directories:<sys/types.h>,<sys/dir.h>
- File Manipulation Routines: unistd.h, sys/types.h, sys/stat.h
- Exercises
Time Functions
- Basic time functions
- Example time applications
  - Example 1: Time (in seconds) to perform some computation
  - Example 2: Set a random number seed
- Exercises
Process Control: <stdlib.h>,<unistd.h>
- Running UNIX Commands from C
- execl()
- fork()
- wait()
- exit()
- Exerises
Interprocess Communication (IPC), Pipes
- Piping in a C program: <stdio.h>
- popen() -- Formatted Piping
- pipe() -- Low level Piping
- Exercises
IPC:Interrupts and Signals: <signal.h>
- Sending Signals -- kill(), raise()
- Signal Handling -- signal()
- sig_talk.c -- complete example program
- Other signal functions
IPC:Message Queues:<sys/msg.h>
- Initialising the Message Queue
- IPC Functions, Key Arguments, and Creation Flags: <sys/ipc.h>
- Controlling message queues
- Sending and Receiving Messages
- POSIX Messages: <mqueue.h>
- Example: Sending messages between two processes
  - message_send.c -- creating and sending to a simple message queue
  - message_rec.c -- receiving the above message
- Some further example message queue programs
- Exercises
IPC:Semaphores
- Initializing a Semaphore Set
- Controlling Semaphores
- Semaphore Operations
- POSIX Semaphores: <semaphore.h>
- semaphore.c: Illustration of simple semaphore passing
- Some further example semaphore programs
- Exercises
IPC:Shared Memory
- Accessing a Shared Memory Segment
  - Controlling a Shared Memory Segment
- Attaching and Detaching a Shared Memory Segment
- Example two processes comunicating via shared memory:shm_server.c, shm_client.c
  - shm_server.c
  - shm_client.c
- POSIX Shared Memory
- Mapped memory
- Some further example shared memory programs
- Exercises
IPC:Sockets
- Socket Creation and Naming
- Connecting Stream Sockets
- Stream Data Transfer and Closing
- Datagram sockets
- Socket Options
- Example Socket Programs:socket_server.c,socket_client
  - socket_server.c
  - socket_client.c
- Exercises
Threads: Basic Theory and Libraries
- Processes and Threads
- Thread Levels
- Threads libraries
- The POSIX Threads Library:libpthread, <pthread.h>
- Solaris Threads: <thread.h>
  - Unique Solaris Threads Functions
  - Similar Solaris Threads Functions
- Compiling a Multithreaded Application
  - Preparing for Compilation
  - Debugging a Multithreaded Program
Further Threads Programming:Thread Attributes (POSIX)
- Attributes
- Initializing Thread Attributes
- Destroying Thread Attributes
- Thread's Detach State
- Thread's Set Scope
- Thread Scheduling Policy
  - Thread Inherited Scheduling Policy
  - Set Scheduling Parameters
- Thread Stack Size
  - Building Your Own Thread Stack
Further Threads Programming:Synchronization
- Mutual Exclusion Locks
- Condition Variable Attributes
- Threads and Semaphores
  - POSIX Semaphores
  - Basic Solaris Semaphore Functions
Thread programming examples
- Using thr_create() and thr_join()
- Arrays
- Deadlock
- Signal Handler
- Interprocess Synchronization
- The Producer / Consumer Problem
- A Socket Server
- Using Many Threads
- Real-time Thread Example
- POSIX Cancellation
- Software Race Condition
- Tgrep: Threadeds version of UNIX grep
- Multithreaded Quicksort
Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
- What Is RPC
- How RPC Works
- RPC Application Development
- Overview of Interface Routines
  - Simplified Level Routine Function
  - Top Level Routines
- Intermediate Level Routines
  - Expert Level Routines
  - Bottom Level Routines
- The Programmer's Interface to RPC
- Exercise
Protocol Compiling and Lower Level RPC Programming
- What is rpcgen
- An rpcgen Tutorial
  - Converting Local Procedures to Remote Procedures
- Passing Complex Data Structures
- Preprocessing Directives
- Recommended Reading
- Exercises
Writing Larger Programs
- Header files
- External variables and functions
  - Scope of externals
- Advantages of Using Several Files
- How to Divide a Program between Several Files
- Organisation of Data in each File
- The Make Utility
- Make Programming
- Creating a makefile
- Make macros
- Running Make
About this document ...

Dave Marshall
1/5/1999