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C Programming/POSIX Reference

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The C POSIX library is a language-independent library (using C calling conventions) that adds functions specific to POSIX systems. POSIX (and the Single Unix Specification) specifies a number of routines that should be available over and above those in the C standard library proper. It was developed at the same time as the ANSI C standard and is closely related to C. Some effort was made to make the C and POSIX libraries compatible, but there are a few POSIX functions that were never introduced into ANSI C.

Facilities are often implemented alongside the C standard library functionality, with varying degrees of closeness. For example, glibc implements functions such as fork within libc.so, but before NPTL was merged into glibc it constituted a separate library with its own linker flag. Often, this POSIX-specified functionality will be regarded as part of the library; the C library proper may be identified as the ANSI or ISO C library.

Header files

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aio.h Asynchronous input and output.
arpa/inet.h Definitions for internet operations.
cpio.h Magic numbers for the cpio archive format.
dirent.h Allows the opening and listing of directories.
fcntl.h File opening, locking and other operations.
fmtmsg.h Message display structures.
fnmatch.h Filename-matching types.
ftw.h File tree traversal.
glob.h Pathname pattern-matching types.
grp.h User group information and control.
iconv.h Codeset conversion facility.
langinfo.h Language information constants.
libgen.h Definitions for pattern matching functions.
monetary.h Monetary types.
mqueue.h Message queues (REALTIME).
ndbm.h Definitions for ndbm database operations.
net/if.h Sockets local interfaces.
netdb.h Definitions for network database operations.
netinet/in.h Internet address family.
netinet/tcp.h Definitions for the Internet Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
nl_types.h Data types.
poll.h Definitions for the poll() function.
pthread.h Defines an API for creating and manipulating POSIX threads.
pwd.h Passwd (user information) access and control.
regex.h Regular expression matching types.
sched.h Execution scheduling.
search.h Search tables.
semaphore.h Semaphores.
spawn.h Create a new process to run an executable program.
strings.h String operations.
stropts.h STREAMS interface (STREAMS).
sys/ipc.h Inter-process communication (IPC).
sys/mman.h POSIX memory management declarations.
sys/msg.h POSIX message queues.
sys/resource.h Definitions for XSI resource operations.
sys/select.h Select types.
sys/sem.h POSIX semaphores.
sys/shm.h XSI shared memory facility.
sys/socket.h Main sockets header.
sys/stat.h File information (stat et al.).
sys/statvfs.h VFS File System information structure.
sys/time.h Time and date functions and structures.
sys/times.h File access and modification times structure.
sys/types.h Various data types used elsewhere.
sys/uio.h Definitions for vector I/O operations.
sys/un.h Definitions for UNIX domain sockets.
sys/utsname.h uname and related structures.
sys/wait.h Status of terminated child processes.
syslog.h Definitions for system error logging.
tar.h Magic numbers for the tar archive format.
termios.h Allows terminal I/O interfaces.
trace.h Tracing.
ulimit.h ulimit commands.
unistd.h Various essential POSIX functions and constants.
utime.h File access and modification times.
utmpx.h User accounting database definitions.
wordexp.h Word-expansion types.

Standard overlap headers

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Headers that overlap/extend the C standard.

assert.h Verify program assertion.
complex.h Complex arithmetic.
ctype.h Character types.
fenv.h Floating-point environment.
float.h Floating types.
inttypes.h Fixed size integer types.
iso646.h Alternative spellings.
limits.h Implementation-defined constants.
locale.h Category macros.
math.h Mathematical declarations.
setjmp.h Stack environment declarations.
signal.h Signals.
stdarg.h Handle variable argument list.
stdbool.h Boolean type and values.
stddef.h Standard type definitions.
stdint.h Integer types.
stdio.h Standard buffered input/output.
stdlib.h Standard library definitions.
string.h String operations.
tgmath.h Type-generic macros.
time.h Time types.
wchar.h Wide-character handling.
wctype.h Wide-character classification and mapping utilities.

References

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Bibliography

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  • Gallmeister, Bill (January 1, 1995), POSIX.4 Programmers Guide: Programming for the Real World (1st ed.), O'Reilly Media, p. 564, ISBN 1565920740