I am learning c programming in Linux. There are a lot of linux functions I need to look at. Is there a website that gives me the details of the Linux functions?
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what kind of fuctions do mean? what do you want to do? not sure what you mean by linux functions. there are some behaviour that differs between the system but unless you are doing something very os precise im not to sure what you mean. been programming on win and *ix for a few years and never come accross any linux specific functions im afraid (but hey, maybe you know better!)chikuba– chikuba2012-03-20 22:04:17 +00:00Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 22:04
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You should probably look into "man pages".Samuel Edwin Ward– Samuel Edwin Ward2012-03-20 22:04:52 +00:00Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 22:04
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You mean like a list of commands?alex– alex2012-03-20 22:05:00 +00:00Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 22:05
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"man pages" is what i wanted!xinghua– xinghua2012-03-20 22:41:15 +00:00Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 22:41
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good question. I think it can be very useful to others.dAm2K– dAm2K2012-03-20 23:29:56 +00:00Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 23:29
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5 Answers
Are you referring to system calls in Linux? There are lots of sources. The man pages are your good friends in this regard. Try also http://linux.die.net/man/2/syscalls. I am sure there are lots of others.
2 Comments
David Heffernan
linux.die.net is miles out of date. I think you should point people at kernel.org: kernel.org/doc/man-pages/online/dir_section_2.html
xinghua
@David Heffernan that is the site i want
The standard reference by far is "Advanced programming in the UNIX environment" by Richard Stevens. Unfortunately this book is quite old, so there is a revised edition by Eric Raymond, which covers new stuff in Linux. This -- more than anything else -- is the de facto standard for learning "old world" systems programming in Linux. (And most other *ixes, there are of course differences, but you won't notice them until you're much more advanced, and by that point you'll be familiar with the man pages and know where to look.)
answered Mar 20, 2012 at 22:43
Kristopher Micinski
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You can look at the LSB (Linux Standard Base) website:
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/lsb
Here are is the last Linux Standard Base Core Specification:
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IMHO http://linux.die.net/man/ is the easiest to get to start with.
It has useful sections introductions, so you can get your bearings
Most usefully are the one line synopsis pages, e.g. http://linux.die.net/man/3/
This shows the scale of what you are asking, and also lets you search for a key word describing each function within your browser, which can be very handy.
As has been pointed out, it is not the most up-to-date, but IMHO it is easier for a beginner to use than the alternative I've seen (not that there can't be something better, just google doesn't bother to show it).
Also worth trying apropos or man 3 -K or aman -k`
1 Comment
Basile Starynkevitch
Don't forget that when programming in C on Linux, you may want also to use a lot of various libraries (ncurses, curl, gdm, gtk and many hundreds others libraries) in addition of
-lc -lm -ldl -lpthread -lrt (covered in the usual section 2 and 3 of the man pages).I find the glibc manual very good. It is organized by topic and contains concise background material and examples. It'll allow you to get the big picture and serves as a reference. Manpages are a quicker way to access function descriptions but there are only useful if you already know what you are looking for.