NAME

libast - introduction to the AST library

DESCRIPTION

This section describes the AST (AT&T Software Technology) library functions of the libast library. libast serves three major purposes. First, it presents (a subset of) POSIX/ANSI standard headers and interfaces on non-compliant systems. Second, it provides a portable base of routines that implement concepts common to all UNIX system variants. Finally, it is a forum for modern implementations of features present (or lacking) in the standard C libraries. Features better provided by separate libraries are omitted from libast. For example, most terminal driver interface issues are left for special purpose libraries such as curses(3).

The libast related header files are installed in the directories include/ast. Routines that do not advertize their own headers are prototyped in <ast.h>. <ast.h> includes or defines the equivalent of <limits.h>, <stddef.h>, <stdlib.h>, <sys/types.h>, <string.h> and <unistd.h>. Other libraries that depend on libast may also have headers installed in the include/ast directories.

FILES

include/ast         the ast package header directory
lib/libast.a        the libast library
lib/libast-g.a      the libast library compiled for debugging
lib/libast-pg.a     the libast library compiled for profiling
lib/libast.so.4.0   the libast shared library

SEE ALSO

intro(3), intro(2), cc(1)

CAVEATS

The library documentation is still under construction. Yes, some of it has been in this state since the 1980s. Thank goodness our commands self-document.