HP-UX Reference (11i v2 03/08) - 5 Miscellaneous Topics, 7 Device (Special) Files, 9 General Information, Index (vol 9)

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glossary(9) glossary(9)
computer’s hardware, find all devices accessible through the computer, and then load
either a specified operating system or the first operating system found according to a
specific search algorithm.
bus address A number which makes up part of the address HP-UX uses to locate a particular device.
The bus address is determined by a switch setting on a peripheral device which allows
the computer to distinguish between two devices connected to the same interface. A bus
address is sometimes called a ‘‘device address’’.
character An element used for the organization, control, or representation of text. Characters
include graphic characters and control characters.
character set A set of characters used to communicate in a native or computer language.
character special file
A special file associated with I/O devices that transfer data byte-by-byte. Other byte-
mode I/O devices include printers, nine-track magnetic tape drives, and disk drives when
accessed in ‘‘raw’’ mode (see raw disk). A character special file has no predefined
structure.
child process A new process created by a pre-existing process via the fork(2) system call. The new pro-
cess is thereafter known to the pre-existing process as its child process. The pre-
existing process is the parent process of the new process. See parent process and
fork.
clock tick A rate used within the system for scheduling and accounting. It consists of the number of
intervals per second as defined by
CLK_TCK that is used to express the value in type
clock_t. CLK_TCK was previously known as the defined constant HZ.
coded character set
A set of unambiguous rules that establishes a character set and the one-to-one relation-
ship between each character of the set and its corresponding bit representation. ASCII
is a coded character set.
collating element
The smallest entity used in collation to determine the logical ordering of strings (that is,
the collation sequence). To accommodate native languages, a collating element con-
sists of either a single character, or two or more characters collating as a single entity.
The current value of the
LANG environment variable determines the current set of collat-
ing elements.
collation The logical ordering of strings in a predefined sequence according to rules established by
precedence. These rules identify a collation sequence among the collating elements and
also govern the ordering of strings consisting of multiple collating elements, to accommo-
date native languages.
collation sequence
The ordering sequence applied to collating elements when they are sorted. To accom-
modate native languages, collation sequence can be thought of as the relative order of
collating elements as set by the current value of the
LANG environment variable.
Characters can be omitted from the collation sequence, or two or more collating elements
can be given the same relative order (see string(3C)).
command A directive to perform a particular task. HP-UX commands are executed through a com-
mand interpreter called a shell. HP-UX supports several shells, including the POSIX
shell (sh-posix (1)), the C shell (csh(1)), and the Korn shell (ksh(1)). See sh(1) for more
information about supported shells. Most commands are carried out by an executable
file, called a utility, which might take the form of a stand-alone unit of executable object
code (a program) or a file containing a list of other programs to execute in a given order
(a shell script). Scripts can contain references to other scripts, as well as to object-code
programs. A typical command consists of the utility name followed by arguments that
are passed to the utility. For example, in the command, ‘‘ls mydirectory ’’, ‘‘ls’’ is the
utility name and ‘‘mydirectory ’’ is an argument passed to the ‘‘ls’’ utility.
command interpreter
A program which reads lines of text from standard input (typed at the keyboard or read
from a file), and interprets them as requests to execute other programs. A command
interpreter for HP-UX is called a shell. See sh(1) and related manual entries.
Section 9−−4 Hewlett-Packard Company − 3 − HP-UX 11i Version 2: August 2003