Systems Programming with Zig: Build Real Tools with No Hidden Cost - Paperback

by Mihalis Tsoukalos (Author)

Build efficient systems software with the Zig programming language by creating UNIX tools, network services, asynchronous applications, and high-performance servers.

Key Features:

- Build real-world systems software and UNIX programming tools through practical Zig projects

- Develop network programming skills through TCP, UDP, HTTP services, concurrent applications, and CLI tools

- Master memory management, I/O, and systems-level design with the Zig programming language

Book Description:

Build reliable systems software with Zig through a project-driven approach focused on practical engineering challenges. Guided by UNIX systems engineer & bestselling author Mihalis Tsoukalos, you will learn modern systems programming techniques while creating production-ready applications, UNIX tools, & network services.

This book takes you from essential UNIX tooling and build infrastructure to advanced topics such as direct memory access, binary formats, filesystem monitoring, networking, concurrency, asynchronous I/O, & database integration. Through hands-on projects, you will create command-line utilities, TCP and UDP services, HTTP applications, file indexing tools, cache servers, & a domain-specific language interpreter that combines memory management, comptime metaprogramming, parsing, evaluation, & error handling.

Each chapter demonstrates how Zig features solve practical systems programming problems. You will work with memory management, process control, synchronization primitives, event-driven architectures, SQLite integration, protocol design, & performance-focused data structures while learning the reasoning behind key engineering decisions.

By the end of this book, you will be able to build efficient and maintainable systems software in Zig & confidently apply the language to production projects.

What You Will Learn:

- Build production-ready UNIX command-line tools with Zig

- Develop TCP, UDP, and HTTP network services and applications

- Apply systems programming techniques to memory, filesystems, and process management

- Manage memory and binary data safely and efficiently

- Implement multithreading, synchronization, and concurrent systems

- Create asynchronous I/O and event-driven network applications

- Integrate SQLite into real-world Zig applications

- Design and build a domain-specific language using parsing and comptime techniques

Who this book is for:

Software developers, systems programmers, UNIX systems engineers, and backend engineers who already understand Zig fundamentals and want to build production-ready systems software. Familiarity with programming concepts and experience using languages such as C, C++, Rust, Go, or Python will help you get the most from this book.

Table of Contents

- Building Essential UNIX Tools

- Systems Infrastructure: Builds, Testing, and Distribution

- Direct Memory Access and Binary Formats

- Processing Streams, Buffers, and Data Encoding

- Navigating Directories and Filesystem Events

- Programming the Network Stack

- Managing Threads, Processes, and Signals

- Orchestrating Concurrency and Synchronization

- Implementing Asynchronous I/O

- Building a High-Performance In-Memory Cache Server

- Persisting Structured Data with SQLite3

- Developing a Domain-Specific Language