Important Notice: Our web hosting provider recently started charging us for additional visits, which was unexpected. In response, we're seeking donations. Depending on the situation, we may explore different monetization options for our Community and Expert Contributors. It's crucial to provide more returns for their expertise and offer more Expert Validated Answers or AI Validated Answers. Learn more about our hosting issue here.

How can I understand UNIX system & library calls?

April 26, 2017library system understand Unix

0

Posted

How can I understand UNIX system & library calls?

1 Answer

0

Posted

UNIX provides online documentation for library and system calls through the man facility. We will give an example with the UNIX system command to start a new process. In UNIX, this is known as a fork (as the path of the two processes may fork from this point and may not perform the same tasks). Whenever you want to know more about a standard library call in UNIX, use the >man command. Now would be a good time to type “man fork” from the shell prompt. Note that if you are an emacs user, you can type M-x man fork (don’t forget that in emacs-speak M-x is Escape followed by x) and get a nicely formatted manual page that you can treat like any other emacs buffer. Each manual page is divided into labeled sections. The first is simply the name of the command and what it does. Next a synopsis is presented which gives very basic information on how to use the command.