On Sat, Apr 4, 2020, 9:19 AM markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> wrote:
Hoi,

found on Wikipedia:

        As well as the Bourne shell, he wrote the adb debugger
        and The UNIX System, the second book on the UNIX system,
        intended for a general readership.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_R._Bourne

Thus I now wonder what the first book on Unix, intended for a
general readership was.

Bourne's book was published 1983.

(``The UNIX Programming Environment'' was published 1984.)


Was it Banahan and Rutter's ``UNIX -- the Book''? It says 1982.

Could anyone share some background on that one? (The authors were
from Bradford University.)

I only have the German translation by Axel T. Schreiner, dated
1984. Haven't read the English original, but Schreiner's version
definitely is worth to read (if you speak German). He added lots
of footnotes, and it becomes apparent that he knows the system
better than the authors. ;-)


I'd like to get an understanding of the books in relation to each
other. How does the Banahan/Rutter book fit into the picture? Why
didn't Bell Labs write a user's book earlier? Were Bourne's and
Kernighan/Pike's books reactions to it?

All good questions. I just bought both of these 9n ebay (there are several copies available for <$10 so I didn't feel bad about sniping a rarity from others in this group).

But I don't know the back stories.

Warner 


meillo