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)
control and address space exist until it terminates. It then enters an inactive state
where certain resources may be returned to the system, although some resources, such as
the process ID are still in use. When another process executes a
wait(), wait3(),or
waitpid() function (see wait(2)) for an inactive process, the remaining resources are
returned to the system. The last resource to be returned to the system is the process ID.
At this time, the lifetime of the process ends.
program A sequence of instructions to the computer in the form of binary code (resulting from the
compilation and assembly of program source).
prompt The characters displayed by the shell on the terminal indicating that the system is ready
for a command. The prompt is usually a dollar sign (
$) for ordinary users (% in the C
shell) and a pound sign (
#
) for the superuser, but you can redefine it to be any string by
setting the appropriate shell variable (see sh(1) and related entries). See also secon-
dary prompt.
quit signal The
SIGQUIT signal (see signal(2). The quit signal is generated by typing the character
defined by the teletype handler as your quit signal. (See stty(1), ioctl(2), and termio (7).)
The default is the ASCII FS character (ASCII value 28) generated by typing Ctrl-
\. This
signal usually causes a running program to terminate and generates a file containing the
‘‘core image’’ of the terminated process. The core image is useful for debugging purposes.
(Some systems do not support core images, and on those systems no such file is gen-
erated.)
radix character
The character that separates the integer part of a number from the fractional part. For
example, in American usage, the radix character is a decimal point, while in Europe, a
comma is used.
raw disk The name given to a disk for which there exists a character special file that allows
direct transmission between the disk and the user’s read or write buffer. A single read or
write call results in exactly one I/O call.
read-only file system
A characteristic of a file system that prevents file system modifications.
real group ID A positive integer which is assigned to every user on the system. The association of a
user and his or her real group ID is done in the file
/etc/passwd. The modifier
‘‘real’’ is used because a user can also have an effective group ID. The real group ID
can then be mapped to a group name in the file /etc/group, although it need not be.
Thus, every user is a member of some group (which can be nameless), even if that group
has only one member.
Every time a process creates a child process (via fork(2)), that process has a real group
ID equal to the parent process’s real group ID. This is useful for determining file access
privileges within the process.
real user ID A positive integer which is assigned to every user on the system. A real user ID is
assigned to every valid login name in the file
/etc/passwd. The modifier ‘‘real’’ is
used because a user can also have an effective user ID (see effective user ID).
Every time a process creates a child process (via fork(2)), that process has a real user ID
equal to the parent process’s real user ID. This is useful for determining file access
privileges within the process.
regular expression
A string of zero or more characters that selects text. All the characters contained in the
string might be literal, meaning that the regular expression matches itself only; or one or
more of the characters might be a metacharacter, meaning that a single regular expres-
sion could match several literal strings. Regular expressions are most often encountered
in text editors (such as ed(1), ex(1), or vi(1)), where searches are performed for a specific
piece of text, or in commands that were created to search for a particular string in a file
(most notably grep(1)). Regular expressions are also encountered in the shell, especially
when referring to file names on command lines.
regular file A type of file that is a randomly accessible sequence of bytes, with no further structure
imposed by the system. Its size can be extended. A regular file is also called an ordi-
nary file.
HP-UX 11i Version 2: August 2003 − 16 − Hewlett-Packard Company Section 9−−17