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A Commentary on the UNIX Operating System
Book / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Commentary on the Sixth Edition UNIX Operating System by John Lions (later reissued as Lions' Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition[1][2] and commonly referred to as the Lions Book) is a highly influential[3] 1976 publication containing analytical commentary on the source code of the 6th Edition Unix computer operating system "resident nucleus"[4] (i.e., kernel) software, plus copy formatted and indexed by Lions, of said source code obtained from the authors at AT&T Bell Labs.
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![]() Brian Kernighan holding a copy of Lions's Commentary | |
Author | John Lions |
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Language | English; also available in Chinese and Japanese |
Subject | Unix operating system |
Genre | Computer Science |
Publisher | University of New South Wales |
Publication date | 1976 |
Publication place |
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OCLC | 36099640 |
005.43 | |
LC Class | QA 76.76 .O63 L56 |
Itself an exemplar of the early success of UNIX as portable code for a publishing platform, Lions's work was typeset using UNIX tools, on systems running code ported at the University, similar to that which it documented.[5]
It was commonly held to be the most copied book in computer science.[citation needed] Despite its age, Lions's book is still considered an excellent commentary on simple, high quality code.
Lions's work was most recently reprinted in 1996 by Peer-To-Peer Communications,[6] and has been circulated, recreated or reconstructed variously in a number of media by other parties.[5]