Glossary

Absolute pathname: A pathname that starts at the root directory, that is, with /.
Alias: The shell mechanism for abbreviating a command line (compare the OpenVMS construct :=).
Argument list: The list of words from the command line that the shell passes to a command.
ASCII: American Standard Code for Information Exchange: a standard character encoding scheme.
Background job: A job that is not receiving input from the terminal.
bash: Bourne-Again shell. A shell program common on Linux, based on sh.
Baud: Bits per second; a unit used to describe the transmission speed of data.
Bit bucket: Name for the file /dev/null. Characters written here are "thrown away'; characters read from here cause an immediate EOF.
Bit map: Mapping of the screen such that each pixel is represented in physical memory.
Breakpoint: A point set in a source code program that stops the debugger during execution.
BSD: Berkeley Software Distribution, the version of UNIX originating at the University of California at Berkeley.
Built-in command: A command whose code is internal to the shell; the shell does not fork a process to execute the command.
Card image: A terminal display representation of a punched card, 80 characters per record.
Child process: The process created when the parent process executes the fork system routine.
csh: Shorthand for /bin/csh, the C shell program.
Current directory: The directory to which commands refer...

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UNIX for OpenVMS Users, Third Edition