system calls
in [Unix Programming]
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From: John Gordon on 8 Mar 2010 15:31 In <7vl3guFs3gU1(a)mid.individual.net> Phred Phungus <Phred(a)example.invalid> writes: > fp = popen ("mv *.c backups1/.", "r"); Why are you capturing the output of the mv command? popen() does not return error output, only standard output. What standard output are you hoping to capture? -- John Gordon A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs gordon(a)panix.com B is for Basil, assaulted by bears -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
From: John Gordon on 8 Mar 2010 15:40 In <7vl2bqFl6mU1(a)mid.individual.net> Phred Phungus <Phred(a)example.invalid> writes: > This shows a couple of the frustrations I have with man pages. When > they are slightly out of the ordinary, I don't have them. Furthermore, If your system is missing man pages, that's the fault of the sysadmin, not the man page itself. (I know this doesn't help you, but let's place blame where it belongs.) > they take over the terminal, and though they be 1500 lines long, I can't > use the scroll bar. By default, man pages are displayed via the "more" command, which allows only for forward scrolling. If you like, you can use other programs to display the results: man fork | less man fork | cat "less" is similar to "more" but allows for backwards scrolling, and "cat" just dumps the entire page to your screen thus allowing you to use the scrollbars on your window. -- John Gordon A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs gordon(a)panix.com B is for Basil, assaulted by bears -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
From: Ersek, Laszlo on 8 Mar 2010 15:57 In article <7vl2bqFl6mU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Phred Phungus <Phred(a)example.invalid> writes: > I've been using this place for reference: > > http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/functions/fork.html > > , and have gone the next step to download the current unix > specification, but it comes in a form that I don't see how to use: > > [...] > > After extraction, it looks like this: > > [...] > > , so I know the content is there; it's just in dozens of different > folders and html pages. If you try the following files under the extracted root folder, they are all good places to start. index.html webindex.html The latter features a search box too, which searches The Open Group's database. The links returned are in the http:// scheme, not file://. If you need local search capabilty, just extract the tarball somewhere, and index it with one of the many desktop search apps. "recoll" is an example. ----v---- Package: recoll Description: Personal full text search package with a QT GUI This package is a personal full text search package is based on a very strong backend (Xapian), for which it provides an easy to use and feature-rich interface. . Features: * QT-based GUI * Supports the following document types (and their compressed versions) - Natively: text, html, OpenOffice files, maildir and mailbox (Mozilla and ----^---- .... Be more polite. You can learn a great deal in this group (not from me), so even pure self-interest dictates that you don't alienate people. Cheers, lacos
From: Scott Lurndal on 8 Mar 2010 16:05 John Gordon <gordon(a)panix.com> writes: >In <7vl2bqFl6mU1(a)mid.individual.net> Phred Phungus <Phred(a)example.invalid> writes: > >> This shows a couple of the frustrations I have with man pages. When >> they are slightly out of the ordinary, I don't have them. Furthermore, > >If your system is missing man pages, that's the fault of the sysadmin, not >the man page itself. (I know this doesn't help you, but let's place blame >where it belongs.) use 'xman'. It should be installed on most ubuntu systems. scott
From: Alan Curry on 8 Mar 2010 19:04
In article <7vl2bqFl6mU1(a)mid.individual.net>, Phred Phungus <Phred(a)example.invalid> wrote: |Ian Collins wrote: |> Phred Phungus wrote: |>> |>> I don't post to be told that I'm putting forth no effort. Why don't |>> you tell me what I didn't read today, |> |> One of W. Richard Stevens Unix programming books? They will give you |> the background to make better sense of man pages and other documentation. |> | |Thx, Ian, I just ordered it. I only have one unix reference right now, |and it's more from a user's standpoint. Unix doesn't enforce any strict boundary between "users" and "programmers", but based on posts like this one, I think you need to become a bit better at the "user" stuff before you have a chance at the "programmer" stuff. | |http://i46.tinypic.com/33db7nq.png | |This shows a couple of the frustrations I have with man pages. When |they are slightly out of the ordinary, I don't have them. Furthermore, Unfortunately, some Linux distributions don't consider the system man pages mandatory so you have to go find them. If you don't know how to search your distribution's package list to find the package that will install the basic C library man pages for you, make that a priority. If that fails (and it definitely should not!) you can go straight to the original source, which is the directory /pub/linux/docs/man-pages on ftp.xx.kernel.org (xx is your country code). |they take over the terminal, and though they be 1500 lines long, I can't |use the scroll bar. This is where you really revealed how far behind you are. The scroll bar on a terminal emulator is only for scrolling back to see the stuff that's already been printed and scrolled off the screen. It's not part of the interface to any program currently running on the terminal. Terminal scrollback is useful after you run a command that spewed too much output too fast for you to read it. When you have a well-behaved program (like "man") that prints its output one screenful at a time through a pager, you don't need scrollback. The pager itself not only handles basic scrolling up and down through the content, but also does more stuff like searching which you will want to do pretty soon. Your pager, your editor, and your shell are things you should study in detail, because they are the 3 most important pieces of the unix user interface. They are also, not coincidentally, 3 pieces for which there are many alternatives. more/less, vi/emacs, bash/zsh, etc. If you can't figure out how to scroll and search in the pager which displays your man pages, you are still in unix kindergarten. That's the stage in which you really need to be getting help from someone who's there with you, looking over your shoulder and correcting you when you are doing something completely wacky like trying to use a terminal scrollbar when there's nothing in the scrollback buffer! Long-distance help through usenet is too slow for that. And don't worry about fork() yet. You're expected to go through a phase of not getting it. Everyone does. Eventually it hits you all at once. It's a major milestone in understanding unix. You've got some other milestones to pass first. -- Alan Curry |