system call
1
6.8
- noun
- /ˈsɪstəm kɔl/
- Specialized
:
llamada al sistema
- For network communication, developers often rely on specific system calls that interact with the operating system's kernel.
Examples
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And some of those system calls invoke access to neighboring processors.
Fiction book (2002) -
Retrofitting MAC to a large existing kernel such as Linux can be error-prone, especially given the sometimes ill-specified semantics of Linux system calls.
Academic text (2011) -
So I guess the first thing is the system call that they call CAP enter.
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And then we'll put the system call number for pause up here again.
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To hide the operating system mouse cursor, applications make OS system calls that have the operating system hide the cursor.
Blog text (14) -
For example, to create a container, thread T makes the system call idt containercreate(idt C, labelt L).
Academic text (2011) -
We later verified that the measurements were valid by comparing the real-time clock measurements with the user time reported by the getrusage system call on an experiment-by-experiment basis.
Academic text (1997) -
For example, you can design a sane Unix program by imagining which system calls it should make (how it ought to look in strace) and then writing the code that "fills in the gaps" in the simplest way.
Blog text (8) -
The program executed a system call to request memory access from the operating system.
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When the application needed to read data from a file, it used a system call to communicate with the OS.
Synonyms
A command a program sends to pause and ask the operating system to do a task
Surface Forms
Morphology
The sense is compositionally built from 'system' (the operating collection) + 'call' (an invocation/request); a learner who knows those meanings can infer this is a call/request made to the system (i.e. the OS). Although the term is technical, it follows a regular 'X call' pattern common in computing and is therefore predictable from its parts.
Etymology
The noun system call comes from the picture of a program making a call to the computer system, like calling someone to 'ask for help'. So a system call is a request where a program asks the system to do something for it.