York

n : the English royal house (a branch of the Plantagenet line)

that reigned from 1461 to 1485; its emblem was a white

rose [syn: {York}, {House of York}]

fork

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)