Getting information about Linux- and Unix-specific header files
There are a lot of specific functions and header files for Linux and other Unix systems. Generally speaking these are POSIX functions, even though some are Linux-specific, such as sysinfo()
. We have already seen two of the POSIX files in the previous recipe: unistd.h
and sys/types.h
. Since they're POSIX files, they're available in all Unix-like systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, and Solaris.
In this recipe, we will learn more about these POSIX header files, what they do, and when and how you can use them. We will also learn how to look up information about these files in the manual page.
Getting ready
In this recipe, we will look up header files in the manual. If you are using a Fedora-based system, such as CentOS, Fedora, or Red Hat, these manual pages are already installed on your system. If for some reason they are missing, you can install them with dnf install man-pages
as root, or with...