posix

When creating command-line applications, the user is usually present at the terminal to provide commands to the application and read its output. This is called interactive mode. But sometimes, you want to start a long-running program in the background, so it runs while you're not present. This is called daemon mode, and the programs themselves are usually called daemons. Daemons? In contrast to their mythical counterpart, daemons under Unix are usually much more benign....

So I've just returned from a week long vacation to sunny Kos Island in Greece. As I lay beside the swimming pools of the resort I was staying, I found that I had loaded two particular books onto my Kindle. These books were “ The C Programming Language” by Kernigan and Ritchie, and “ Advanced Programming in the UNIX environment” by Stevens and Rago. As a long time Linux user and programmer, I have always been intrigued by the C programming language....