Difference between C standard library and C POSIX library

Question

I'm a little confused by "C standard lib" and "C POSIX lib", because I found that, many header files defined in "C POSIX lib" are also part of "C standard lib".

So, I assume that, "C standard lib" is a lib defined by ANSI C organization, and there are different implementation on different platforms (Win32/Unix-like), and "C POSIX lib" is just a implementation for "C standard lib" on Unix-like OSes, right?

But "C POSIX lib" contains some headers not specified in "C standard lib", such as <sys/types.h>, <sys/wait.h>, and <pthread.h>.

Take <pthread.h> as an example, I presume its "C standard lib" counterpart is <threads.h>, then if I want to write a multi-threaded program on Linux, which header file should I include, <pthread.h> or <threads.h>?

Answer 1

POSIX is a superset of the standard C library, and it's important to note that it defers to it. If C and POSIX is ever in conflict, C wins.

Sockets, file descriptors, shared memory etc. are all part of POSIX, but do not exist in the C library.

pthread.h is used for POSIX threads and threads.h is a new header for C11 and is part of the C library. Perhaps pthreads will be deprecated sometime in the future in favor of the C ones, however you probably can't count on C11 to have widespread deployment yet. Therefore if you want portability you should prefer pthreads for now. If portability is not a concern, and you have C11 threads available, you should probably use those.

Answer 2

The C POSIX library is a specification of a C standard library for POSIX systems. It was developed at the same time as the ANSI C standard. Some effort was made to make POSIX compatible with standard C; POSIX includes additional functions to those introduced in standard C.