Supervisor Call instructionThis article covers the specific instruction on the IBM System/360 and successor mainframe computers, and compatible machines. For the general concept of an instruction for issuing calls to an operating system, see System call. A Supervisor Call instruction (SVC) is a hardware instruction used by the System/360 family of IBM mainframe computers up to contemporary zSeries, the Amdahl 470V/5, 470V/6, 470V/7, 470V/8, 580, 5880, 5990M, and 5990A, and others; Univac 90/60, 90/70 and 90/80, and possibly others; the Fujitsu M180 (UP) and M200 (MP), and others; and is also used in the Hercules open source mainframe emulation software.
Wrapper functionA wrapper function is a function (another word for a subroutine) in a software library or a computer program whose main purpose is to call a second subroutine or a system call with little or no additional computation. Wrapper functions are used to make writing computer programs easier by abstracting away the details of a subroutine's underlying implementation. Wrapper functions are a means of delegation and can be used for a number of purposes. Wrapper functions can be used to make writing computer programs easier.
Exec (system call)In computing, exec is a functionality of an operating system that runs an in the context of an already existing process, replacing the previous executable. This act is also referred to as an overlay. It is especially important in Unix-like systems, although it exists elsewhere. As no new process is created, the process identifier (PID) does not change, but the machine code, data, heap, and stack of the process are replaced by those of the new program.
Wait (system call)In computer operating systems, a process (or task) may wait for another process to complete its execution. In most systems, a parent process can create an independently executing child process. The parent process may then issue a wait system call, which suspends the execution of the parent process while the child executes. When the child process terminates, it returns an exit status to the operating system, which is then returned to the waiting parent process. The parent process then resumes execution.
Resource management (computing)In computer programming, resource management refers to techniques for managing resources (components with limited availability). Computer programs may manage their own resources by using features exposed by programming languages ( is a survey article contrasting different approaches), or may elect to manage them by a host – an operating system or virtual machine – or another program. Host-based management is known as resource tracking, and consists of cleaning up resource leaks: terminating access to resources that have been acquired but not released after use.
Process identifierIn computing, the process identifier (a.k.a. process ID or PID) is a number used by most operating system kernels—such as those of Unix, macOS and Windows—to uniquely identify an active process. This number may be used as a parameter in various function calls, allowing processes to be manipulated, such as adjusting the process's priority or killing it altogether. In Unix-like operating systems, new processes are created by the fork() system call. The PID is returned to the parent process, enabling it to refer to the child in further function calls.
Parent processIn computing, a parent process is a process that has created one or more child processes. 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. Every process (except process 0) has one parent process, but can have many child processes. The operating system kernel identifies each process by its process identifier.
