Computer terminalComputer input/output device for users The DEC VT100, a widely emulated computer terminal IBM 2741, a widely emulated computer terminal in the 1960s and 1970s(keyboard/printer) A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system.
File descriptorIn Unix and Unix-likecomputeroperating systems, a file descriptor (FD, less frequently fildes) is a process-unique identifier (handle) for a file or other input/outputresource, such as a pipe or network socket. File descriptors typically have non-negative integer values, with negative values being reserved to indicate "no value" or error conditions. File descriptors are a part of the POSIXAPI.Input/outputIn computing, input/output (I/O, i/o, or informally io or IO) is the communication between an information processing system, such as a computer, and the outside world, such as another computer system, peripherals, or a human operator. Inputs are the signals or data received by the system and outputs are the signals or data sent from it. The term can also be used as part of an action; to "perform I/O" is to perform an input or output operation.POSIXThe Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; IPA: ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems.
Redirection (computing)In computing, redirection is a form of interprocess communication, and is a function common to most command-line interpreters, including the various Unix shells that can redirect standard streams to user-specified locations. The concept of redirection is quite old, dating back to the earliest operating systems (OS). A discussion of the design goals for redirection can be found already in the 1971 description of the input-output subsystem of the Multics OS.
Shell (computing)An operating systemshell is a computer program that provides relatively broad and direct access to the system on which it runs. The term shell refers to how it is a relatively thin layer around an operating system. Most shells are command-line interface (CLI) programs. Some graphical user interfaces (GUI) also include shells.
Computer programmingComputer programming or coding is the composition of sequences of instructions, called programs, that computers can follow to perform tasks. It involves designing and implementing algorithms, step-by-step specifications of procedures, by writing code in one or more programming languages. Programmers typically use high-level programming languages that are more easily intelligible to humans than machine code, which is directly executed by the central processing unit.
Pipeline (Unix)In Unix-like computer operating systems, a pipeline is a mechanism for inter-process communication using message passing. A pipeline is a set of processes chained together by their standard streams, so that the output text of each process (stdout) is passed directly as input (stdin) to the next one. The second process is started as the first process is still executing, and they are executed concurrently.Parent processComputing software instance that has created one or more child processes In computing, a parent process is a process that has created one or more child processes. Unix-like systems In Unix-like operating systems, every process except process 0 (the swapper) is created when another process executes the fork() system call. The process that invoked fork is the parent process and the newly created process is the child process.Child processA child process (CP) in computing is a process created by another process (the parent process). This technique pertains to multitasking operating systems, and is sometimes called a subprocess or traditionally a subtask. There are two major procedures for creating a child process: the fork system call (preferred in Unix-like systems and the POSIX standard) and the spawn (preferred in the modern (NT) kernel of Microsoft Windows, as well as in some historical operating systems).
Communication channelA communication channel refers either to a physical transmission medium such as a wire, or to a logical connection over a multiplexed medium such as a radio channel in telecommunications and computer networking. A channel is used for information transfer of, for example, a digital bit stream, from one or several senders to one or several receivers.
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