posix

Introduction At university we had an introduction to operating systems course where we basically learnt how basic unix utilities like cat, ls, etc, worked by programming them in C using the unix API. This course was kind of mind blowing as I never touched such low level APIs, and kind of broke the illusion that system’s programming involves some kind of black magic and Einstein level brainpower. So with this article series I want to re-remember those lessons in the hopes that someone can also break that barrier to learning this kind of low level stuff. [Read More]

Everything is a file (descriptor) Im sure that most of you who use (or have studied) unix like operating systems like linux or the BSDs know about their philosophy. But when you really think about it, what is that file descriptor thingy? And why would everything be a file? Lets find out! The origin… unix! As always, everything old about computer things has to be related to unix. You dont trust me? [Read More]