fork

<operating system>

A Unix system call used by a process (the "parent") to make a copy (the "child") of itself. The child process is identical to the parent except it has a different process identifier and a zero return value from the fork call. It is assumed to have used no resources.

A fork followed by an exec can be used to start a different process but this can be inefficient and some later Unix variants provide vfork as an alternative mechanism for this.

See also fork bomb.

Last updated: 1996-12-08

Nearby terms:

foreign key ♦ Foresight ♦ for free ♦ fork ♦ fork bomb ♦ forked ♦ for loop

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