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Porting File, Device, and Network I/O

Mac OS X offers most of the standard UNIX mechanisms for file and device I/O. There are, however, differences to be aware of when porting your application to Mac OS X from other UNIX-based and UNIX-like platforms.

This chapter describes file I/O and device I/O in Mac OS X, including APIs that will enhance the user experience such as the file manager APIs for file access.

If you are a commercial software developer or if your application will be used by end users, you should read this chapter.

If you are writing a port of an open source application or an in-house UNIX application, you should read this chapter only if your application already uses or plans to use alternate file APIs for other platforms or if you need to do device I/O.

Contents:

How Mac OS X File I/O Works
How Mac OS X Device I/O Works
File System Organization
How Mac OS Networking Works

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