The reader is expected to be proficient in the C programming language. This includes a familiarity with memory management, the use of pointers, and basic data structures.

A Windows, Linux, or macOS development machine is recommended; you can refer to the appendices for setup instructions.

This book takes a hands-on approach to learning and includes 44 example programs. Working through these examples as you read the book will help enforce the concepts.

The code for this book is released under the MIT open source license. The reader is encouraged to use, modify, improve, and even publish their changes to these example programs.

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

The code bundle for the book is also publicly hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/codeplea/hands-on-network-programming-with-c. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on that GitHub repository. Each chapter that introduces example programs begins with the commands needed to download the book's code.

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789349863_ColorImages.pdf.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, variable names, function names, directory names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, URLs, and user input. Here is an example: "Use the select() function to wait for network data."

A block of code is set as follows:

/* example program */

#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
    printf("Hello World!\n");
    return 0;
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

gcc hello.c -o hello
./hello

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."