Noun | 1. | fork - cutlery used for serving and eating food |
2. | fork - the act of branching out or dividing into branches | |
3. | fork - a part of a forked or branching shape; "he broke off one of the branches"; "they took the south fork" | |
4. | fork - an agricultural tool used for lifting or digging; has a handle and metal prongs | |
5. | fork - the angle formed by the inner sides of the legs where they join the human trunk Synonyms: crotch | |
Verb | 1. | fork - lift with a pitchfork; "pitchfork hay" Synonyms: pitchfork |
2. | fork - place under attack with one's own pieces, of two enemy pieces | |
3. | fork - divide into two or more branches so as to form a fork; "The road forks" | |
4. | fork - shape like a fork; "She forked her fingers" |
(operating system) | 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. |