"Open Computing" Standard Unix API Functions

This text covers the COSE (Common Operating System Environment), Unix API standard.

The Unix API (Application Programming Interface) are libraries of pre-written code that programmers can use to develop applications for the Unix System.

Prior to the Unix API, there was no standardization of the code, so different companies made different APIs, making it difficult for programmers who wanted to switch Unix versions or hardware to link different Unix systems.

The new APIs allow for portability, scalability, interoperability and compatibility.

Unix API functions make it possible to design application software without having to worry about compatibility across platforms, so that applications can run on a wide variety of hardware installations.

This book lists and describes all the standard Unix API functions.

The programming portion of the book focuses primarily on the C language interface to the operating system and answers the needs of programmers developing applications software that can be ported in source code form between different computer systems supporting Unix API functions. This collection of APIs covers such areas as headers; process execution and control interfaces; process signalling interfaces; interprocess communication; process status and resources; file systems and directories; and standard input/output libraries.