Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The word "fork" has been used to mean "to divide in branches, go separate ways" as early as the 14th century. [2] In the software environment, the word evokes the fork system call, which causes a running process to split itself into two (almost) identical copies that (typically) diverge to perform different tasks.
Fork and its variants are typically the only way of doing so in Unix-like systems. For a process to start the execution of a different program, it first forks to create a copy of itself. Then, the copy, called the " child process ", calls the exec system call to overlay itself with the other program: it ceases execution of its former program in ...
The term was coined by the programmers at MIT's Project MAC.According to Fernando J. Corbató, who worked on Project MAC around 1963, his team was the first to use the term daemon, inspired by Maxwell's demon, an imaginary agent in physics and thermodynamics that helped to sort molecules, stating, "We fancifully began to use the word daemon to describe background processes that worked ...
A single processor or uniprocessor system could disable interrupts by executing currently running code without preemption, which is very inefficient on multiprocessor systems. [7] " The key ability we require to implement synchronization in a multiprocessor is a set of hardware primitives with the ability to atomically read and modify a memory ...
The DOS/Windows spawn functions are inspired by Unix functions fork and exec; however, as these operating systems do not support fork, [2] the spawn function was supplied as a replacement for the fork-exec combination. However, the spawn function, although it deals adequately with the most common use cases, lacks the full power of fork-exec ...
Unlike extended attributes, a similar file system feature which is typically of fixed size, forks can be of variable size, possibly even larger than the file's primary data fork. The size of a file is the sum of the sizes of each fork. Popular file systems that can use forks include Apple's HFS+ and Microsoft's NTFS.
Learn the history and meaning of usps postal codes, why it's called a ZIP code, whether a postal code is a ZIP code, and what ZIP code numbers stand for. This Is What Your ZIP Code Actually Means ...
Also simply application or app. Computer software designed to perform a group of coordinated functions, tasks, or activities for the benefit of the user. Common examples of applications include word processors, spreadsheets, accounting applications, web browsers, media players, aeronautical flight simulators, console games, and photo editors. This contrasts with system software, which is ...