Software Tools

by Brian W. Kernighan, P.J. Plauger

With the same style and clarity that characterized their highly acclaimed book, The Elements of Programming Style, the authors have written Software Tools to teach how to write good programs that make good tools. The programs contained in the book are not artificial, but are actual programs ae tools which have proved valuable in the production of other programs.

Modern programming techniques such as structured programming and top-down design are emphasized and applied to every program. The programs are presented in a structured language called Ratfor ("Rational Fortran") which can be easily understood by anyone familiar with Fortran or PL/I, Algol, PASCAL, or similar languages. (Ratfor translates readily into Fortran or PL/I. One of the tools presented is a preprocessor to translate Ratfor into Fortran). All of the programs are complete and have been tested directly from the text. The programs are available in machine-readable form from Addison-Wesley.

Software Tools is ideal for use in a "software engineering" course, for a second course in programming, or as a supplement in any programming course. All programmers, professional and student, will find the book invaluable as a source of proven, useful programs for reading and study. Numerous exercises are provided to test comprehension and to extend the concepts presented in the text.

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Computers, Technical, Software, Technology

338 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1976

About the author

Brian Wilson Kernighan is a computer scientist who worked at Bell Labs alongside Unix creators Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie and contributed greatly to Unix and its school of thought.

Reviews

[Ari Fordsham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Completely outdated technically, but a great read - it's essentially reading the history of UNIX.

[Brok3n · Rating 4 out of 5]

Building your kit

I read Software Tools, by Brian W. Kernighan and P. J. Plauger (henceforth K&P) around 1978. This was the first edition, which came out in 1976. I was a grad student in Biochemistry. Software Tools was one of three books that came out of Bell Labs in the seventies and eighties: Software Tools by K&P in 1976, The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie in 1978, and The UNIX Programming Environment by Kernighan and Pike in 1983. My graduate mentor, who was one of those remarkable people who knows everything but is somehow not a know-it-all, pointed me to them. (He was not a computer guy -- I think he may have had a brother who worked at Bell Labs.) I have little formal education in programming, and these remarkable books were invaluable.

I began programming seriously in 1973 when I started my freshman year at Cornell University -- the first time I had access to a computer. Software Tools was perhaps the first book I ever read that convincingly addressed the question of how one should design software. The answer presented is not one everyone agrees on. (Microsoft regularly flings to the ground and dances upon every principle here presented.) But I found it congenial.

K&P argue that one way to design good software is to build a toolkit. Each command in the toolkit should accomplish a single, easily stated purpose. When possible, they should be simple -- if you can build a useful and versatile tool with just a few lines of code, you should. And the tools should be designed to work well together.

But K&P are not sterile theorists! Software Tools describes just such a toolkit, with complete working code available for download. Indeed, most of these tools are still in use today, in the form of the basic (and, alas, opaquely named) commands in any Unix-like operating system. I'm including GNU/linux in that group, even though GNU stands for Gnu's Not Unix.

Simplicity and clarity of purpose are good things in engineering! I still use in 2023 tools of my own that I designed back in the 70's after reading Software Tools.

Blog review.

[TK Keanini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was published in 1976. It is classic and a great read. Lots of common sense and I'll go ahead and say that this was one of the first books written showing good patterns and good design.

Oh, and the examples are presented in Ratfor (Rational Fortran)

Kernighan and Plauger are gods.