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.

(1996-12-08)