unixism

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unixism n.

A piece of code or a coding technique that depends on the protected multi-tasking environment with relatively low process-spawn overhead that exists on virtual-memory Unix systems. Common unixisms include: gratuitous use of `fork(2)`; the assumption that certain undocumented but well-known features of Unix libraries such as `stdio(3)` are supported elsewhere; reliance on obscure side-effects of system calls (use of `sleep(2)` with a 0 argument to clue the scheduler that you're willing to give up your time-slice, for example); the assumption that freshly allocated memory is zeroed; and the assumption that fragmentation problems won't arise from never `free()`ing memory. Compare vaxocentrism; see also New Jersey.

Unix weenie | = U = | unswizzle