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unixism: n. A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected
multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that
exists on virtual-memory Unix systems. Common
unixisms include: gratuitous use of
fork(2);
the assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of Unix
libraries such as
stdio(3)
are supported elsewhere; reliance on obscure
side-effects of system calls (use of
sleep(2)
with a 0 argument to clue the scheduler that you're willing to give up your
time-slice, for example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is
zeroed; and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from
never
free()ing
memory. Compare vaxocentrism; see also
New Jersey.
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