Hacker News Reader

This is a great book, one of my faves. It is a surprise to see it hosted on archive.org when it is still in print, though. Please support good technical writing!

https://www.amazon.com/Unix-Programming-Environment-Prentice...

View on HN

It's not in print anymore. Your link is a used book.

The link I posted has both new and used copies for sale.

It's being advertised as new as in, "it's not not used"; not new as in, "it's not old".

The edition being sold is 39 years old.

"Being in print" or "new" a is not well-defined in this context. "Being in print" is only a metaphor, since the process of printing is typically completed when a copy of a book is sold (and makes not sense in the case of publishing-on-demand, where it would be equivalent to "is available"); and "new" can mean "in its original condition" or "recently published" (with some uncertainty what time span "recently" denotes).

A more precise criterion would be whether a book is still on its publisher's backlist. As far as "The UNIX Programming Environment" is concerned, the answer is positive. Its publisher Prentice Hall was aquired by Simon & Schuster and later sold to Pearson.[1] On Pearson's Web-site the book is still available.[2]

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prentice_Hall

[2] https://www.pearson.com/en-us/subject-catalog/p/unix-program...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com