On Wed, 6 Jul 2005, Edd Barrett wrote:
> Hi,
>
> One of my friends has always said that you can not read the source
> without context. He is right. If you don't know what your looking for,
> it will not make any sense. This proves a problem if you have nothing to
> fix and just wish to learn.
>
> Would you not agree?
Of course the context of a source file is the program it is part of
and the function it is supposed to perform. Now there are a bunch of
simple, straightforward commands in any Unix system, which can be used
to start learning.
Take a simple command. Even yes(1) can be used as an example. Read the
man page and try to map the functionality described in the man page to
the source you are seeing. While you're at it, check the man page of
the functions it uses to accomplish its task.
Move on to more complex programs that use more and more library
functions and system calls. Study the implementation of the library
functions and system calls, now that you know what they are supposed
to do and you have seen them used in actual programs.
If you have no context, start building it. Of course, reading a few
good books might help as well.
-Otto
