#168 System Programming with C++

Book notes - Hands-On System Programming with C++ by Dr. Rian Quinn.

Notes

Table of Contents - Highlights

Getting Started with System Programming

Benefits of using C++ for system programming:

Type safety
Objects
Templates
Functional programming
Error handling
APIs and C++ containers

The C standard language

The C standard is a huge standard that is managed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO/IEC 9899:TC3.

Libraries

Standard C not only defines a syntax, the environment, and how programs are linked, it also provides a set of libraries including:

errno.h: working with errors
inttypes.h: type information
limits.h: limits of each type
setjump.h: APIs for C-style exception handling
signal.h: APIs for handling signals sent from the system to your program,
stdbool.h: type information
stddef.h: type information
stdint.h: type information
stdio.h: working with input and output
stdlib.h: various utilities, including dynamic memory allocation APIs
time.h: working with clocks

The C++ standard

Like the C standard, the C++ standard is huge and is managed by the ISO: Working Draft, Standard for Programming Language C++.

The POSIX standard

The POSIX standard defines all of the functionality a POSIX-compliant operating system must implement: 1003.1-2017 - IEEE Standard for Information Technology–Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX(R)) Base Specifications, Issue 7

Some key things it defines:

Memory management
Filesystems
Sockets
Threading

Under the hood, most of the system-level APIs that C and C++ provide actually execute POSIX functions; libc is generally considered to be a subset of the greater POSIX standard.

System Types for C and C++

Exploring C and C++ default types

char, wchar_t
short int, int, long int
float, double, long double
bool (C++ only)

C++, RAII, and the GSL Refresher

A brief overview of C++17
Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII)
The Guideline Support Library (GSL)

Programming Linux/Unix Systems

The Linux ABI
The Unix filesystem
Unix processes
Unix signals

Learning to Program Console Input/Output

Learning about stream-based IO
Beginning with user-defined types
Learning about manipulators
Recreating the echo program
Understanding the Serial Echo server example

A Comprehensive Look at Memory Management

Learning about the new and delete functions
Understanding smart pointers and ownership
Learning about mapping and permissions
Learning importance of memory fragmentation

Learning to Program File Input/Output

Opening a file
Reading and writing to a file
Understanding file utilities
Understanding the logger example
Learning about the tail file example
Comparing C++ versus mmap benchmark

A Hands-On Approach to Allocators

Introducing the C++ allocators
Studying an example of stateless, cache–aligned allocator
Studying an example of a stateful, memory–pool allocator

Programming POSIX Sockets Using C++

Beginning with POSIX sockets
Beginning with APIs
Studying an example on the UDP echo server
Studying an example on the TCP echo server
Exploring an example on TCP Logger
Trying out an example for processing packets
Processing an example of processing JSON

Time Interfaces in Unix

Learning about POSIX time.h APIs
Exploring C++ Chrono APIs
Studying an example on the read system clock
Studying an example on high-resolution timer

Learning to Program POSIX and C++ Threads

Understanding POSIX threads
Exploring C++ threads
Studying an example on parallel computation
Studying an example on benchmarking with threads
Studying an example on thread logging

Error – Handling with Exceptions

Error handling POSIX-style
Learning about set jump exceptions
Understanding exception support in C++

Getting the Example Source

git clone https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-System-Programming-with-CPP.git example_source

Project Notes