The most important abbreviations and acronyms used in the main text are defined here.
Application Programming Interface. The set of procedure calls that communicates with a linkable procedure library or an operating-system kernel or the combination of both.
Berkeley System Distribution; also Berkeley Software Distribution; sources are ambiguous. The generic name of the Unix distributions issued by the Computer Science Research Group at the University of California at Berkeley between 1976 and 1994, and of the open-source Unixes genetically descended from them.
Command Line Interface. Considered archaic by some, but still very useful in the Unix world.
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. The central Web repository for Perl modules and extensions.
GNU's Not Unix! The recursive acronym for the Free Software Foundation's project to produce an entire free-software clone of Unix. This effort didn't completely succeed, but did produce many of the essential tools of modern Unix development including Emacs and the GNU Compiler Collection.
Graphical User Interface. The modern style of application interface using mice, windows, and icons invented at Xerox PARC during the 1970s, as opposed to the older CLI or roguelike styles.
Integrated Development Environment. A GUI workbench for developing code, featuring facilities like symbolic debugging, version control, and data-structure browsing. These are not commonly used under Unix, for reasons discussed in Chapter 15.
Internet Engineering Task Force. The entity responsible for defining Internet protocols such as TCP/IP. A loose, collegial organization mainly of technical people.
Inter-Process Communication. Any method of passing data between processes running in separate address spaces.
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. A series of RFCs that describe standards for embedding binary and multipart messages within RFC-822 mail. Besides being used for mail transport, MIME is used as an underlevel by important application protocols including HTTP and BEEP.
Object Oriented. A style of programming that tries to encapsulate data to be manipulated and the code that manipulates it in (theoretically) sealed containers called objects. By contrast, non-object-oriented programming is more casual about exposing the internals of the data structure and code.
Operating System. The foundation software of a machine; that which schedules tasks, allocates storage, and presents a default interface to the user between applications. The facilities an operating system provides and its general design philosophy exert an extremely strong influence on programming style and on the technical cultures that grow up around its host machines.
Portable Document Format. The PostScript language for control of printers and other imaging devices is designed to be streamed to printers. PDF is a sequence of PostScript pages, packaged with annotations so it can conveniently be used as a display format.
Programmable Data Processor 11. Possibly the single most successful minicomputer design in history; first shipped in 1970, last shipped in 1990, and the immediate ancestor of the VAX. The PDP-11 was the first major Unix platform.
Portable Network Graphics. The World Wide Web Consortium's standard and recommended format for bitmap graphics images. An elegantly designed binary graphics format described in Chapter 5.
Request For Comment. An Internet standard. The name arose at a time when the documents were regarded as proposals to be submitted to a then-nonexistent but anticipated formal approval process of some sort. The formal approval process never materialized.
Remote Procedure Call. Use of IPC methods that attempt to create the illusion that the processes exchanging them are running in the same address space, so they can cheaply (a) share complex structures, and (b) call each other like function libraries, ignoring latency and other performance considerations. This illusion is notoriously difficult to sustain.
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The basic protocol of the Internet since the conversion from NCP (Network Control Protocol) in 1983. Provides reliable transport of data streams.
Universal Datagram Protocol/Internet Protocol. Provides unreliable but low-latency transport for small data packets.
User Interface.
Formally, Virtual Address Extension: the name of a classic minicomputer design developed by Digital Equipment Corporation (later merged with Compaq, later merged with Hewlett-Packard) from the PDP-11. The first VAX shipped in 1977. For ten years after 1980 VAXen were among the most important Unix platforms. Microprocessor reimplementations are still shipping today.